The Project Cycle

“It was all running smoothly, but I learned that even with the perfect planning and organization, anything can happen.”

In an economy, there are different steps to a business cycle: expansion, peak, recession, trough, repeat. For the entirety of the first semester of my senior year, Carlos and I experienced the expansion period. We had our entire year planned out, and the progress was going great. We maintained the pond clean; we incorporated new life; we got ready to pour the concrete, and finally during Thanksgiving break, we reached our peak pouring the concrete. Then recession hit.

After that, everything seemed to go south. Our first challenge was the cracks that opened up on the bottom edges of the pond which caused groundwater to come inside the pond. As a solution, we decided to use waterstop cement to fill those cracks, but then another challenge arose: rain. Throughout the entire third quarter, it would rain every time we drained and dried the pond. It was almost impossible to find a day where we could patch the cracks.

While we struggled with the pond, the koi fish also grew ill in their new habitat and died.  After that, the construction crew that was renovating the old dining hall removed the filter for the pond. Days later, they were put at a halt because the fire marshall demanded a permit for the construction. So, even if we finished our part of the project, we could not restore the pond back to normal because the filter was taken out.

To top it all off, we were about to finish patching the cracks and then start applying the concrete sealer when coronavirus happened. School was canceled, and we have not been able to work on it since. 

This might all seem like a summary, but it is really a moment of realization to me. At the beginning of the year, we had everything planned out perfectly. It was all running smoothly, but I learned that even with the perfect planning and organization, anything can happen. I learned that one needs to have adaptability and resilience because even when everything is planned out, there are obstacles that will come your way, and you have to be ready for it.

After every recession in a business cycle, expansion starts. That means that everything starts getting better as actions are taken, and that is what I will take away from this project. Once you hit roadblocks along the way, you have to keep going. Don’t give up; don’t throw the towel; don’t stop working. Because if you stop working toward your goal, then that is when you fail. But if you keep working hard to find the best solution to end a project or goal, at least you will have that satisfaction that you gave it everything.