1 pm Friday classes have never been this engaging before. This is coming from a third year undergraduate student who has had her fair share of falling asleep through her classes, yet everything seem to fall into place today.

We were talking about the difference between a management oriented project and a team oriented one, when my lecturer asked, "What do you think make up a super team?"
I didn't give it much thought. I was never good at guessing what my lecturer/teacher wants. But anyways, he continued, "If you think it's about combining the best people in their respective fields in one group - you are wrong."
Putting together a group of heroes does not make a dream team. He said, a true super team, is a group of ordinary people with an amazing teamwork, resulting in extraordinary outcomes. I felt like I was sitting in a Glee club by this point, but well, I was a fan of the show so might as well :)

You can't expect a group of people to produce a better outcome by introducing one MVP. This kind of player is usually not a team player, which doesn't benefit us in this team oriented project. The same goes with systems. You can't expect an efficient system will come out of the combination of some great, individual components. Both an efficient system and a great team need balance, trade-offs; that buffer component, that mere supporter in the team that may look like they don't do much or add any value, but really, it's what makes or breaks your system/team. Just like in systems thinking, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

This afternoon's class reminded me not only of the basic principles in Industrial Engineering, but also one of the basic rules in life. My father, in his daily lectures for me when he drives me to campus mainly says, that life is all about balance. You give and you take, you win and you lose - even most words come with an opposite to balance them. Nature does not provide you specific rules for this 'balance', but it's an inevitable process we have to face every single day.

If you ask me, I've been living with this mindset for a few years now. Seize today. If not, well, let's just hope we still have tomorrow to balance it out.