Our final presentation was 2.5 hours, but it felt more like 30 mins. Each of us enjoyed delivering our sections and I think from the enthusiastic response of our sponsors, they felt satisfied with our work. I became the team’s lead on hydropower in China, while my three classmates took leads on hydropower in India, hydro technologies, and weather derivatives + life reinsurance.

Looking back, in order for us to finish all of our work on time, we had to do something that was unexpectedly very, very difficult for me. We had to 100% trust each other to cover our respective sections. There were parts in my section that my teammate had not seen before the final presentation and vice versa.

Now, don’t misunderstand. I’m not a controlling person or somebody who likes to be involved in every little detail. But, what I’d become accustomed to in the classroom was the ability to read all parts to any group paper we handed in for grading. There was always time to object to a sentence here or a graph there.

But this summer, given that each part of our final report was so new that there was no time-efficient way for each of us to become mini-experts on all areas, we had to trust each other to do our best and “deliver” on the final day.  

So why did I find letting go to be challenging? Shouldn’t I have been excited to do less work? Wouldn’t anyone have wanted to pass off the responsibility to draw solid conclusions about very unknown topics? Especially since I’ve never been a brainy-act, this prospect should have left me whooping for joy.

After thinking for a while, I think that I was uncomfortable because I’ve never been in a pressure situation when it’s been okay to pass off responsibility. It has usually been just the opposite. Usually when something of value is at stake, I’ve been asked to take on as much as possible.

Besides learning about hedge funds and renewable sources of energy, I learned about the trust necessary for smart people to handle tough problems in a time crunch. It’s not like natinal presidents know more than his or her cabinet members do (although it helps to know the basics), instead s/he selects advisors wisely, then trusts them to do their jobs.