project management The process of planning, organising, staffing,
directing and controlling the production of a system.

Of all things to remind you of your childhood, project management should not be it. I was however, sitting in my System’s Design lecture today and became supremely concious of how much of what was being talked about I had actually done before – but when I was about 10yrs.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, maybe I’ve changed a little bit. I was an extremely bossy little girl with my fingers in every pie and running absoutely everything (which means of course: delegation, unless I could do it better, in which case I’d let them do it and then would proceed to fix it up how I wanted it to be, often upsetting the person in question.) I’m sure my parents and sisters can testify to this. I was probably fairly horrible a lot of the time and royal pain.
I was organised, the ‘pack leader’ (not hard when you’re the oldest girl and your ‘peers’ are mostly a few years younger) and forever going about ‘doing new things’ or expanding on what was.

Being rather imaginative/creative and quite apt at drawing people into my ideas or coercing them, I on several ocassions took Laura on the massive expeditions into what I now know as: systems/project development! She might claim that she had as much of a role in launching these – but I somehow don’t think it would’ve gone to quite the extent it did had I not been involved.

I became aquainted and then very good friends with Microsoft Works (Excel equivalent of the time) and as I explored the various limitations posibilities of technology, the world expanded beautifully.

Laura and I, with the aid of a Readers Digest Home/Farm running book “Back to Basics“, a spreadsheet, hours and weeks, my facination with horses (at the time – how lame), created a full blown ranch/farm. Planning and budgeting. Staffing and Managing. We were quite aware that it would never ‘come to be’ but it hardly stopped us.

That’s not to mention, the scout clubs for our Sylvanians (which we still have somewhere). The running of mud towns (NB. Bec in position of power – always), newspapers, mock restuarants, clubs, small businesses that actually operated etc…

And now I find myself with the daunting task of doing it all again – a little differently, a lot more realistically. I have a semester to produce a System design, unfortunately with a lot more constraints then just that. The true budgeting thing freaks me out, but I think the overarching concepts have reignited that long dormant thrill….

Which is really the only thing I can think of that produced that feeling of supressed and curious excitement during a fairly boring 10am lecture.

Now I just have to decide what to actually do it on.

General Life Personality