all five of us had been plugging away on our own sections of a brand analysis of red bull, the first part of which was due yesterday. our group of five women have all been very polite and diplomatic but no one had really taken the lead so i offered to compile everyone's sections into one document. (you can take the girl out of the weekly competitive report but you can't take the weekly competitive report out of the girl!)
a little cutting and pasting, and we'd be on our way, i thought. yeah...not so much. as the other pieces trickled in i thanked god i'd spent most of my career as an editor and project manager. one section contradicted the other section which contradicted the other section, and with an hour to go we were still missing one member's opening section AND and intro and summary. so i chugged a diet dew (ironically, there wasn't a red bull to be found) and started herding cats by phone and email.
in my best non-panicked, pleading, girlie voice, i suggested revisions, assigned the intro and summary, and hunted down our missing contributor. with 15 minutes to go we had our intro and an opening section that i hoped our professor would think was written by someone with english as a second language. with 5 minutes to go, i pulled a summary out of my ass, slapped a coat of editorial paint and a red bull logo on the report and sent it off to the other group member who really stepped it up for printing.
i was stressed, exasperated, and hadn't felt that good in a long time. 6 months, to be exact, when i was putting out fires for a living. i'd forgotten the exhilaration of taking the wheel of a car out of control, the thrill of problem solving, and the pride and sense of accomplishment when the day is saved.
and thankfully, i think everyone in our group realized this isn't the best way to go about part two of our project so we're already a few steps ahead. but i think i'll stock up on the red bull just in case...
No comments:
Post a Comment