The Final Push

There are weeks when my planner is casually thrown into my bag to use as a reference or to have handy in case I need to write something down. And then there are weeks where my planner is essentially attached to my hand like a security blanket and I flip through the pages frantically to assure myself that I haven't forgotten anything. This is one of those security blanket weeks.

As always, things are going smoothly with the team and we're working fairly harmoniously together. However, this part of the semester is always difficult. The time for crazy ideas has mostly passed, and now we're hit with the realization of oh, wow, we have to actually figure out how to make this thing work. And of course, the making it work part requires just as much creativity and design thinking as the crazy ideas part, but for whatever reason, saying "Hey guys, I just realized we should put the loading dock on the south side of the grocery store!" doesn't sound quite as cool as "Hey guys, we should have a WINE BAR in the community art center!" It's not that it's any less fun--but it requires more of a nose-to-the-grindstone type of mentality.

What's really getting to me right now is the daunting task of putting together the final presentation itself. This project is SO complex. First, we have to make people understand what the context of Las Vegas is like. Then, we have to get them oriented to our site, which is very difficult to do when they have never been there. And then, we have to show what we're proposing, explain it thoroughly, tie it to the context of Las Vegas and the existing site, make a convincing argument that it will work, and prove that it's feasible. Oh, and it has to look cool. And there are so many factors that go into the project: economics, location, climate, demographics, circulation, code, what the buildings around the site look like, and even more that I'm probably forgetting about right now because I've spent about seven hours today working on a SketchUp model. I'm terrified of letting something slip through the cracks.

Today, one of my teammates said, "The only thing I'm worried about right now is burnout." If that's all we have to worry about, then we're in good shape, because burnout is definitely not going to happen. No matter how overwhelming this may seem, we have laid out a detailed schedule and to-do list and are making sure we have at least one rough draft of the entire presentation before the final is done. Working in an organized and clear fashion really takes a weight off my shoulders (come on, I opened this post talking about my planner!), so I feel really good knowing we have that ready for us. More importantly, we are all still very excited about this project. When we take a step back and really look at it, we can't help but say hey, that looks awesome! So with clear goals and excited spirits, I think we'll end the semester strong with an awesome presentation.