Why Knitters make the BEST Project Managers

To answer all my social media friends’ questions: No, I have not been AWOL.  I was on a course this past semester. 

I signed up in August, thinking “…hmmm a 13 week course, 3 hours of lectures per week…plus…what? …maybe another 3 or 4 hours of reading a week?  No problem. I can work this into my already hectic schedule.”  WRONG.  Try 20-40 hours per week with the assignments and studying all in.  It was a second job… or rather, third or fourth job, when you factor in parenting, my ‘real’ job, and volunteer commitments. It didn’t take me very long at all before I suffered a case of wholehearted lament. Earsplitting brain-chatter and thoughts invaded my silent walks and bike rides to and from campus each week: “I don’t HAVE TO take this Project Management Course… it’s professional development... I can drop it… OMG – what the H*LL was I thinking? But no – I have to set a good example for my children… finish what you start… don’t give up just because things get tough… @#$%… sigh….”

Needless to say, I gave up reading fiction, the paltry screen-time in which I used to take pleasure, and did a lot of stress knitting. 

A LOT OF STRESS KNITTING.  For the Rebel Knitter: Stress Knitting = Socks.  Something about minuscule, petite stitches with tiny little needles and meager, skinny yarn makes me feel like the goddess Athena: goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, mathematics, strength, war strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill.  Recognized for her calm nature, Athena is a well-known goddess, recognized as only entering into combat for just reasons, and never fighting without a purpose…all traits that proved necessary for the duration of this course. 

No…I am not being overly dramatic. Seriously!  There were times when I would have clocked a couple of my Teammates if they had been present in the room.  Like the time I discovered that one of them had plagiarized their Plan.  Don’t get me started!

I loved the Professor – he is a great teacher.  His lectures were both interesting and entertaining; which was immense, because I doubt there were ever two more boring textbooks than “Successful Project Management” and the “Project Management Book of Knowledge” (insert audible yawn here).  For goodness sake… when we got to Communications Management and Human Resources Management I was all lit up with excitement… Finally… something engaging.  But no… these two tomes managed to make even PEOPLE mind-numbingly boring!  Seriously!  People ARE NOT BORING… but when discussed by Project Management manuals… apparently so. 

60% of the class was based on exams and the remaining 40% on the Group Assignment.  I hate group assignments – people can be such wildcards; and my team was a collection of wildly different personalities. They chose me as the Project Manager on that first day of class. This was going to be a challenge for me. I hadn’t worked on a group assignment since Grade 11 History, 35 years ago.  But I had led groups. I could do this, I knew that – I just needed to survive it.

Things that made me happy during this class:

• Beating the odds. I discovered quickly that I felt out of my depth.  This was a business course.  I am an artsy.  I have worked professionally, running other people’s departments and businesses for over 25 years but I had never before taken a single university-level business course.  Confession: I almost didn’t pass High School Economics; it was my inability to read and follow the Stock Market page of the Montréal Gazette that led to that near disaster – still wish I could decipher  the bloody thing – I’d probably be a billionaire by now if I could.  Honestly, I speak five languages including the cryptic phraseology known as the knitting pattern, which I can only liken to the ability to decipher a secret binary code written for fibrenistas, and when written well can take on mystic significance.  Just ask anyone at your local yarn store!  But NASDAQ? NYSE? Forget about it. It's like Klingon to me.

• Having a team that listened and didn’t argue. They even called me their “fearless leader”. Yeah. That was pretty gratifying.  Truth be told, I plied them with coffee and brought baked goods to many of our meetings.  As anyone who has attended a Stitch n Bitch knows, the secret to a good meeting is in the eating.  Put that in your boring Project Management primer, Mr. or Ms. didactic schoolbook publisher. It’s true and I doubt anyone would refute the value of a good triple chocolate brownie at a brain busting get-together.

•  Discovering my brain still works just fine.  It had been over two decades since I had defended my Grad School thesis.  Two babies, several jobs and several thousands of loads of laundry later, I wasn’t sure it would.  Yay… my Uni 4.0 GPA remains intact.

Things that made me miserable during this class:

• Losing all my free time.  All of it.  Every single nanosecond of it. Yes, I could have blown the course off a wee bit, perhaps not done my best and still ‘passed’. But I am one hell of an obstinate sod, and I always give 110% (what knitter doesn’t!?)

• Discovering that people cheat! Well, I know that people cheat - I'm not that naive... just really surprised that people who have graduated from University, theoretically know the rules... well, that they do it ANYHOW.... seriously disappointing. When I realized that one of my teammates had lifted their plan straight off the internet, I lost it!  Like I said, if he had been in the room I might have thumped him over his twisted melon. That’s like buying a sweater from the GAP, cutting the label out and telling everyone you made it yourself!  Besides, if he would like to risk his own expulsion from the course or university, so be it. But when you work on a group project and cheat, you can get the lot of us expelled.  Foul fiend... I almost French-braided the cretin’s nuts, I was so livid. We didn’t have time to play around, we had so much left to do, so what did I do? I wrote two of his plans for him…. and rewrote his other two because even though I told him “only original work” and to send me his work “not in point form,”  the man cannot write a solid sentence. Grrrrr…. Come on knitters... you would have done the same thing too.  Which one of us knitters hasn’t knit more than his or her fair share in a collective group afghan or the like?

During the last few days of the group project when the clock was quickly ticking down, and I was suddenly discovering a lot of other people’s “oopsies” that they were supposed to have fixed but didn’t, my wonderful Document Editor and I shared many, many ”OMG!” moments.  I confessed that I was considering making my first knitting project after the final exam a sweater that would read “Project Manager” on the back and “I hate people” on the front… she said, “that’s nice, make me one too, except on the front I want it to say Get your #$%& together people!” D*mn, I like that woman!

But it all worked out in the end. I even aced the final exam, which was multiple choice. 

N.B.:  I hate multiple choice tests! I’d rather have a high-colonic than endure one…unless, of course, it’s a Buzzfeed Quiz, I excel at Buzzfeed Multiple Choice Quizzes.

To celebrate my triumph, I knit my friend the hat I knew she wanted, and am currently making my boy, Maverick Knitter, some socks from one of my favourite books, Literary Knits: Billy Pilgrim/Slaughterhouse Five Socks.   Morose?   Perhaps.  But I feel like I have come home from the War ... victorious.  Besides, my boy is growing. These heelless socks make perfect sense for an emergent young man and a shoe size that is in constant flux; and hopefully they will keep his toes toasty in his new hockey skates. 

Yes, spoken like a true knitter.
Or rather Project Manager.
Same thing!

Knitters make the BEST Project Managers.

Why?

Because we know how to create the plan, work the plan, revise the plan, and on occasion: frog the @#^*%$! plan back to beginning and start again.  We cast on, do gauge swatches, measure and re-measure, adapt plans and block… and more often than not we figure out how to make the d*mn thing work anyhow. 

Yes, indeed, knitters do make the BEST Project Managers.