It truly was an unforgettable class. We only had twenty or so minutes to improve our final grade for the midterm. When the professor mentioned that my classmates had to agree on one decision, I thought that it was impossible task to accomplish. But we made it. Yet, even though the plan of the final change of everyone’s grade was not perfect, the experience of negotiation was precious.
My management class represents a high power group, and the main role of the leader was to facilitate decision making among the people. After the discussion started, two people took the initiative to facilitate dialogue among the members of the group. However, soon after listening to each other some people started yelling at each other. The process was getting out of control. It was the first time for me to negotiate something in such a big group of people under a very limited time frame. It kind of “killed” my confidence and my faith to win in this process (to deliver a balanced decision that would meet interests of everyone), and soon after starting the negotiation as compete-to-win participant I found myself as a collaborator.
It was challenging for me, because I have never had a problem of expressing my point of view in front of a big group of people. I also have never had a problem with either being a leader or being leaded by someone. In our classroom, however, there were no single significant leader at the moment. There were a few people (including me) who actively participated in the process, but no one could be called a leader at the moment. Even the person (thank to him) writing ideas on the board didn’t have the full authority over the group and was attacked a few times. Under the time pressure the situation was becoming ugly as some students were too aggressive in attacking those ones who were against the final plan or just didn’t want to vote because they didn’t have a full understanding of the proposal and it’s consequences.
My transformation from compete-to-win participant into a collaborator occurred after I made an attempt to explain everyone the importance of extra credit assignment using very simple statistics. To me, prove the importance of all options was obvious, as the calculation of the grade including curve and extra credit was very simple. The reality test showed that math was not the best argument for the group. Or may be I wasn’t eloquent enough. I went back, took my seat and realized that once you believe that your idea is workable, but no one supports it, you don’t want to be active anymore. You just want to let the whole process go.
In a similar manner international students kept silent on the issue of keeping the essay as a part of the second test. I know that for American students essays are almost never a problem. Unlike them, I, however, sometimes have a very hard time putting all my thoughts on the paper and spend time not on developing an idea, but rather finding the best way to express myself. Therefore, silence of international students in regard to the essay question was hard for me to understand.
However, despite all disagreements the final decision was made. And I think that it was a fair decision. Not every professor would agree to the terms that we offered: 10-points curve, plus 10 points extra assignment, plus drop the lowest grade for the quiz. Someone in the class said that it was our chance to shine. I agree that it was a possibility for us to bust our grades and argue for additional 10 points for the extra credit assignment. But how fair would that be??? I know that limiting oneself is not the right thing to do when it comes to achieving a goal (such as a good average grade after the discussion). But asking too much is another dilemma. No doubt the test was hard, but it would definitely motivate us to study for the next one. Additional 10 points of the extra credit would bring everyone in the high nineties and half of the class will not study for the second exam and possible fail final exam (which is cumulative, if I’m not mistaken).
Someone said that one should never be afraid to ask for too much or aim high, because even if you don’t reach as high as you wanted, you would still reach higher than you planned. However, you should never exhaust someone’s kindness (as in professor Kupris’ case), because favor can easily turn into one’s dissaproval.
I agree that the class “negotiated” very good position for itself which can be turned against many students when final comes. The thing is that many people didn’t even study for the second test because they would still get a high grade. Even without completion an extra assignment my grade was above 80.
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