I have never been the sort of person that liked to work with groups. In those situations, I tend to be the one to pick up the slack, I like to work on my own time schedule (which isn't really possible with groups), and there always seems to be so many more distractions and obstacles associated with groups. Unfortunately though, its pretty common in life to have work in a group setting and even as a college student, there's really no way around it. When Brother Holmoe, BYU Athletic Director, came to speak on teamwork, I have to admit that I had a couple chips on my shoulder: first, I was skeptical about people who encouraged group work and second, I don't really like football which I knew he would use as a comparison. I'm glad to say that my attitude did change almost immediately and Brother Homloe's lecture may have even been my favorite of the semester. Although Mt. Everest is a common example of a goal, Brother Homloe's comparison of the weather at the top to the stormy weather in our pursuits really made sense to me and helped me to really reflect on my own perseverance.

I also liked how Brother Homloe categorized people as simply firefighters who are more than willing to throw water on another person's fire or a firelighter who will help to keep another person's fire hot. It was however the idea of a firefighter that made me nervous about Wednesday's lab skits. In my experience, putting a group of "leaders" together to work on a project is a disaster because everyone shows up and know that they are supposed to be leading and usually are willing to put out other people's fire to do so. I was definitely impressed to see that that didn't happen. Yes, they were just skits and nothing was really on the line, but everyone in the group's ideas were used and my group was very laid back in its approach. There was one person in my group that didn't appoint himself as the team leader or anything, but he with every comment that anyone made, he was encouraging and listened and wanted to make sure that no one was ignored. You could definitely tell that he was a person that really focuses on the people he interacts with throughout the day and wants them to feel cared about.

He was what being a leader while also being on a team is all about, and I hope that I can do better with this in my apartment. There is still a lot of tension there, but I've realized that the only was to progress and progress well is if we are united in our purpose and evolve our relationships from one simply based upon our living in the same space to significant ones where we give beyond reason to lift each other up. I know that this isn't going to be easy to accomplish, but it's what I have to do in order for things to work out, so I am going to try my best. 

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