Prior to taking Technical Writing, I have never experienced one-on-one relations with a professional organization. At most, I had volunteered for organizations but done basic tasks for them. In this project, I was expected to produce something on my own. What I notice from group, Chattahoochee Now, compared to other groups in the class was the fact that each member was expected to produce something completely different. Even though we work from the same source, the Vision 53 pamphlet, our ideas did not have to necessarily sync together. The independence allowed for my group was positive  in the sense that I had the freedom to create my own presentation the way I wanted, but also negative due to the fact that it became difficult to get us on the same page from working on our own for so long.

One valuable lesson I learned from this project is inevitable: communication. Whether it be from the instructor to student, client to student, or student to student, being able to understand the needs from everyone is vital to be successful.  From an instructor to student level, I started off this project being confused as to what kind of presentations my group ultimately had to produce. From the description, it seemed as though we originally pitched all presentations and our client would eventually choose which presentation type she liked best for us to finalized. Of course, this was not the case as I finally realized this project would require more work from each individual. From a client to student level, all of my group members agreed it was difficult to communicate with our client. Originally, it was difficult to set a time to meet with her person-to-person. Eventually it became a problem communicating through email. We realize she was quite a busy woman, so our individual questions for her about the project may seemed secondary to other projects she had on her plate at the time. The student to student level had similar setbacks, in which it was difficult to schedule a time for us to discuss the project together, as we all had different schedules. Especially after one of our group members dropped the class unannounced, we had to make sure to keep track of where everyone stood at the moment on their progress.

In the end, I felt this project gave a good taste of the “real world.” No matter what profession each of us take, we all are going to have to work with other people and nine times out of ten, work for someone else. Making sure everyone involves is on the same page will make the working process less hectic and more professional.