Curricular Group Project Review

 Group projects are a dreaded thing in any educational or workplace setting. Unless you know your partners and their work habits, skill sets, and personalities intimately well, there are going to be problems. Introverts in the workplace dread forced interaction as it dilutes their personal skill and personable extroverts can be hindered in the same ways. But the work has to get done, so you buckle down and grind through and hope that your idea goes according to plan. The secret to group projects is knowing that nothing is going to go to plan. Ever. It seems to be a twisted law of the universe. There is always going to be a problem; someone deletes the file, another gets sick, a car breaks down, schedules rarely match up, the list goes on. Honestly, group work is a recipe for failure that anyone included in resents. The rare brain trust of success is the only reason group projects are even encouraged, and for them to be successful it can take weeks or even years to develop the proper planning and execution to meet a project goal. No, I am not kidding, this was my mentality when I was assigned this project, because I knew that sheer positivity alone was not going to be enough.

Our project was to describe how students can become cultured while at stony brook university. Since two of our randomly chosen group members were commuters, myself included, and we all had widely varying course loads, we decided that an online chat would be the best way to keep in touch. We broke down culture into parcels based on the history, events, clubs/organizations, and community of Stony Brook. We wanted to do a short video documentary featuring how the culture on campus has changed and how it has affected students, and what students can experience today to become more cultured citizens. We picked a video documentary because a few group members had access to video cameras, editing software, as well as it being an easier way for our quiet members to be present in the final product.

The video documentary was never created, much to my and our team leaders chagrin. It was a good idea, and had we been more organized I believe it would have turned out very well. However, we were hindered in a multitude of ways. The schedule of a commuter student is a much more rigorous one, classes tend to be morning based and afterwards the habit becomes to leave earlier than residents return to their dorms, factoring in driving time and poor traffic. There was little to no communication for the first week and a half between our group members, and when a few of us did start to realize we had a job to do half our group continued to not respond. With the deadline closer than we liked, and knowing the time it took to film and edit a video together, we had to completely switch our project idea more than halfway through. We settled on each of us doing our own research, our own powerpoints, and then linking the topics together into one slideshow at the end. The best way to get our group project done was to not act as a group. I did much higher quality work without having to worry about my other group mates, and I was able to satisfy my obligation to the entire topic. The frustration of dealing with people who were not interested in working or getting a good grade vanished, and I am much happier with the product of my research.

We each researched a facet of the culture on Stony Brook individually. I decided on the history portion since both my parents are alumni from Stony Brook. They were students in the 1980’s, and my mother continued working on campus until 1996. Even after this period ended they both have returned to campus many times to visit friends, attend shows at the staller center, eat lunch, or to participate in scientific seminars. My interest was mainly in the long term cultural effects of Stony Brook, the features that have remained as mile markers for students and faculty. However, Stony Brook has grown rich in terms of culture over the past thirty years, and that was my motivation for picking only a small sampling of what can be found on campus. That sample included the Staller Center, the Roth Regatta, and the Science Fiction Forum, as well as a brief opinion from my parents.

I learned a lot about the history of culture at Stony Brook during this project. The Staller Center has been a huge factor in exposure to the arts for students on campus. As well as acting as a platform for students of the fine arts to showcase their works, the gallery within the Staller Center has also held works from acclaimed professionals. Yoko Ono brought some of her art to Stony Brook in the 1980’s, and that is a spectacular legacy for artists to work towards. The Staller Center shows themselves are a wonderful resource for students to gain perspective and enjoy new experiences, from cultural performances to headline shows. The Stony Brook film festival, a chance for filmmakers to show their labors to the public, has been at the Staller Center since the start in 1996. The brief yet colorful history of the Roth Regatta was also fascinating to research; it was started by the Roth Quad Yacht club. I never knew there had been such a club on campus before. The Regatta is not a fancy show or a high grade art installment, but it is the culture of Stony Brook itself shown openly with everyone as potential participants. It is a famous event all over Long Island, and has helped inspire other similar events across the island, such as the Riverhead Cardboard boat race. I strongly believe it is a vital part of the cultural history at Stony Brook since the scope of the Roth Regatta extends beyond clubs to literally everyone on campus, it has been a unifying event for students in creating our own culture. That idea extends to the Science Fiction Forum, a club that is almost 50 years old. They have been responsible for creating I-CON, a hugely popular science fiction convention on Long Island and in the Northeast. They hold events during the academic year for fans of various media, tv, books, movies, and have the largest lending library of Science Fiction and Fantasy on the East coast. They are a great resource for the reflection of our own culture through the years, and just for enjoying what many consider nerdy. The Forum fosters the love many people hold for this sub-culture and brings anyone who has ever read a sci-fi or fantasy novel together to continue the conversations started by authors. Stony Brook has a rich cultural history that will continue to be inspiring for years to come. 

In the end I learned a lot about what culture is at Stony Brook. It has a lot of definitions with a different meanings to every student at this university. In the end to me, and I hope to many others, becoming cultured at Stony Brook means getting involved. It means exploring what the surrounding world has to offer, with the goal of expanding one's perspective on life and of humanity. I am looking forward to trying new things and delving deeper into the cultural riches here at Stony Brook, so I can have a new world view when I finally do leave here. Continued exposure to culture will hopefully leave me more open minded than before and give me useful perspective in the workplace and in relationships. Culture is the foundation of a student's future and that involvement crafts people who are willing to explore the world around them. That exploration is the pillar for future leaps of progress made by Stony Brook students.