I already had a pretty good understanding of what happened at the constitutional convention before this, since I am so interested in US politics and history, thought there were definitely a few points that I had missed before. I had never seen James Madison’s notes on the proceedings, and these revealed much more of the personal interactions, and what was truly important for every representative at the convention. The interesting thing about all the compromise that happened means that no one was every completely satisfied with outcomes, and this theme is still present in today’s politics, though I see it fading. There’s always the extremely partisan representatives who won’t want to compromise, and that is one of the problems today, fewer and fewer want to compromise from their far extremes. But back to the Convention, almost all of the issues that needed compromise at the Constitutional Convention had to deal with the amount of power that states had in deciding laws that would be effecting them whether it be counting slaves as people, executive elections, and the Senate. A Strong Federal system was established, and two houses created so that both states with large and small populations could be represented. These compromises were met usually through a third party at the convention getting two disagreeing states to both give something small up to work together and both have some level of advantage from the situation. The founding fathers knew compromise was essential for an effective democratic country, so they were willing to do it. Without this compromise, are government can essentially be defunct because it will come to a stand still. In my opinion with the currently growing partisan House and Senate, we will soon be at this point and a change will have to be made. In the words of Colin Powell, “But just as they did in Philadelphia when they were writing the constitution, sooner or later, you’ve got to compromise. You’ve got to start making the compromises that arrive at a consensus and move the country forward.”

Speaking of needing to compromise, our group also had to do some of this in the process of creating our project. To get everyone’s idea’s out there and make sure everyone was heard the whole group had to comprise many times, and it was hard. We had to cut parts of things people were intent on putting in from everyone, but it all turned out well in the end. I have never worked in a group this large, and I admit it has not only difficult getting decisions made, but it was a long process hearing everyone’s opinions. It however really helped getting a lot of work done very quickly being able to trust each other and hand off work. The only problem we really had were making those overall decisions, but once we got moving on compromising our ideas we moved along quickly to the rest of the project.

SInce the group had to make some compromises, I also had to make some with my own ideas. I learned its hard for me to compromise my ideas, but Is was getting easier for me later on in the project. I also learned I love group work when others pull their own weight! My role was very important, because everyone was counting on me to edit during a time crunch and I could not let them down and be late. I had to take the group’s ideas from script and shots and make a video that worked well with everyone’s idea’s, and it turned out really well. I had a lot of fun editing this video because it was both funny and serious at the same time whih made it interesting to edit.

As I said in the other reflection, I think we need two main leaders so one person doesn’t feel overloaded. I also think that we should have set ourselves a much earlier due date before when it had to be actually done, so that we had some more time to work with and practice instead of cutting it so close. I also would probably divide into smaller subcommittees earlier so that those long discussions to make little decisions could have been made earlier and quicker.

We all had to compromise a lot during this project, and that was something I really had to change about myself. I don’t like to compromise, and I am much more open to it now that I have done this project. At the beginning of this project, I got pissed during some discussions at people disregarding some of my ideas, and cutting out parts of others, and it was hard. I realized though that these were for the best of the project, and it all turned out well. I am glad I was able to work on this now instead of latter so I can collaborate better in the future. I had a great time with this group and look forward to other group projects.

Picture from
http://www.Memecreator.com

Quotation from: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/compromise.html#KVFXF7i8YjkLEKds.99

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