Things You Never Knew...

For something that I've built my life around these past two weeks or so, and that's been in my thoughts, both waking and sleeping (ok, I exaggerate) the completion of that assignment has left a slightly bitter aftertaste in my mouth. For a module that has started out with so much promise, I am starting to have serious doubts about tax. Not the actual practice of tax, mind you, but well, to put it in a roundabout way, if i want to take International Tax Law next semester.

The amount of work required was bordering on the insane, considering that we started out knowing absolutely nothing about the subject matter in question. Preliminary research took forever and a day, and even well into the actual writing we were still very hazy about our conclusion. 10,000 words is a lot to write about one subject, even if it is split among 5 people. And all this sweat and blood and tears put in, all for a miserly 40% of the final grade for a FOUR CREDIT module. As a comparision, the admiralty paper is a whopping 80% of the grade, and is only 3000 words. I don't need to do the math.

And then there's the fundamental problem with group work. Not that I'm putting down any of my group members, mind you. They were all fantastic and the amount of work put in was staggering (<3 you Claire!). But at the end of the day, I felt that our final product was in no way any approximation of what we are actually capable of. As undergraduates, we have our own lives. We eat, we sleep, we play. We try to do some work, some times. We meet up from time to time to discuss our work, but that's about it. That is nowhere near the level of collaboration required for a project of this magnitude. The result? A paper that reads damn well, if you read about 500 words at a go and pretend that each portion is in no way related to the entire work.Taking everyone's work and integrating it together such that it reads as a very streamlined essay with a clear train of thought was an insurmountable task. Our final paper read more like a collection of essays than an actual scholarly article.

And guess what? I have another assignment exactly like this one, only the topic is different. It's still on something I know nuts about though. What fun.

Oh, and those of you who were sore at not getting biz n finance, be glad. Be very glad. Unless you find what I just described to be a great challenge that you'd like to take up. Be my guest.