sound advice for teamworkers

If you've been to school, you've probably experienced this: Teamwork.
No single student has ever escaped this curse. Many things have been learned through Teamwork. Many abilities acquired, usually depending on your Implicit School Social Status.

There are many non-mutually-exclusive kinds of teamworkers.
First, there's the Friend. The Friend is the one who will put him/herself with a friend, just to be with a friend, and nobody will do anything until 1 AM the morning of due day.
Then, there are the Leeches. Leeches come in many flavours. There's the Dumb Leech, who will grab the smartest grab-able person and not do shit, just to get the grade.
There's the Smart-but-Lazy Leech, who doesn't care who his/her teammate is, so long as they do the work for them. Nevermind the grade, his exams will make-up for it.
THen, there's of course the One. This is the person who will end up doing everything. Come on, you all know One.

Many precious skills are learned through Teamwork. Perhaps the most important is the ability to find out the people who will do all the work and still let you get credit. People having mastered this skill usually grow up to become some sort of supervisor. Or YOUR BOSS. But, remember, you must not neglect the exploited party. Always be nice to them, because they're the ones you're counting on to save your ass one day. However, do always assure yourself that you have a sizable supply of these at your disposition. It might be a bad idea to always leech off the same one, as resentment builds up and you never know when it might blow up.

One also leans about the great principles of life, such as, if you don't do anything, chances are, someone else will care enough to save their own ass, and maybe yours if you're lucky.
You also learn that you should never leave your team by itself. You need to supervise. Even if you don't do anything relevant. You HAVE TO SUPERVISE. Because the minute you leave the room, that's when People start talking. And you don't want them talking about YOU. Because chances are, they're plotting a way to blame everything on you. And even if they might be right, you can't let that happen.

All fellow teamworkers, you have been warned.

I week into the 2nd semester and already, stuff has started piling up. Reading, reading, and more readings. First week is all about getting organized, and hopefully, once I'm done running after books to buy and stuff to sort, everything will fall into place.

Of course, that's what I tell myself every semester. And there's a reason I have to repeat the same thing every semester. Nothing ever works.

Procrastination: So wrong, but feels so right.
Until exam week.

Assume a job interview

Toward a perfect answer.

Why not med?

- Because I have felt that going in med would not allow me to achieve my full potential. Once one gets accepted into med, one is pretty much assured to get a job, so there isn't much stimulation. In Law, on the contrary, one must be the best in order to secure a job, so the continual competition throughout the years would allow me to keep aiming for the top.

Why would there be no competition in med?

- I guess it's something psychological, in the sense that once you know that as long as you do moderately well, you are pretty much assured to be employed. So there isn't much of an incentive to get better results. In order to get a job, that is.
On top of that, if I had gone into med, it would have been mainly to satisfy my parents. So once I would have been a doctor, I would probably just have sat around, thinking, here, I am a doctor. Isn't that what you wanted? But in Law, there's the added pressure that I have to prove to my parents that I made the right choice, and that I was able to achieve something, and I wouldn't have been satisfied unless I had something great to show them.

Can't you compete against yourself?

- Competing against oneself sounds very nice on paper, but in practice, I find it pretty useless. It is much better to have a tangible target. It is very easy to be satisfied when competing against oneself, since any slight improvement is considered a success. I find it much more productive to have something to aim for, rather than just to be "better" than myself. Say I can only run 1 mile, and my neighbour can run 10 miles. I think it is more productive to tell myself, "tomorrow, I will run 10 miles", rather than to say "tomorrow, I'll run a bit more than a mile".

It all sounded so well in my head...