What could have been

Questions can definitely be considered stupid but that doesn’t mean they are necessarily stupid. If the questions helps you figure something out or clarify something for you then to you it is not stupid. Throughout my life I have kept many questions to myself because I believed others would find the question stupid therefore making me look stupid.

This year as a senior we had to do a capstone project. I actually came up with the idea for my capstone project pretty quickly and was excited about it. I knew that I wanted to do something with basketball and thought that it would be a lot of to do a tournament of some sort where the money raised would go back to the basketball team. I recently got back into playing basketball and was excited to do my project on this topic. At one point I though I might want to be a basketball coach, so doing a tournament and seeing how much work it is from a coaches position would be very educational for me.  My mom told a friend about what I was doing and their child decided that it sounded like a great idea and since my project was boys only they would do the same project but for girls.

After I had already written out all of my plans and filled out the paperwork I met with my panel. They told me that because my project was the exact same as someone elses I had to change my project enough so that it had a different piece than the other person. I was also informed that my new information  I learn ( which was going to be how to run a tournament as a couch) had to change the told me I needed to focus on different ways of advertising the even and have the advertisement piece be what I learn. I wanted to ask why I had to change my plan and redo all the work when I came up with the idea first. However I never asked the question because I assumed they would think that it was a stupid question and not believe that I had come up with the idea first. The other person had submitted their paper work first and I have a reputation for taking the lazy way out. therefore I assumed my question wouldn’t change anything so I decided it wasn’t worth asking. Had I had the courage to ask the question my capstone may have been a little easier, yet it may not have changed anything at all. because I did not ask this question I had to redo all of the paperwork I already did and try to submit it on time. This was difficult because I wasn’t sure exactly how to make my paperwork different from the other persons and ended up having to do a different aspect than planned. I had to come up with more ways to advertise my event and focus on that aspect of the event and use the advertising pics as my focus where before the focus was going to be more of a couch perspective on the event. The advertisement piece wasn’t what I was expecting I had to figure out how to get the event seen by as many people as possible. I had to learn how to ask businesses for help and donations. Although this aspect ended up being good information to know and was a good lesson It was more work than what my original idea would have been and then what the other person had to do.  Had I asked the question and explained to them that I came up with the idea and didn’t feel that I needed to change my project I might not have had to do all of the extra work and could have done my event the way I planned. The panel may have talked to the other person and had them change their idea when they said that it was my idea first.

Not wanting to ask a stupid question kept me from asking my panel this. This made my capstone harder for me to finish on time and made me do things differently than I had planned to do them. Had I asked my question things may have stayed exactly the same and I may have still had to do all the extra work and change my plan. However since I didn’t ask the question I will never know what could have been.