It's not easy being in charge

There's only approximately five hours remaining until the start of GISHWHES, and might I say I can't wait.  Nonetheless, it's been a lot of work so far for something that hasn't even begun, especially since we aren't the event's organizers; as the de facto team leader, I've found that organizing a group can be just as daunting a task as organizing an event itself.  I'm not exactly sure how all the problems and speed bumps became my responsibility, but I guess if you want an idea to come to fruition, you've got the put the effort in yourself.  First of all, getting a team together wasn't as easy a task as it first appeared.  Fifteen kids in the class, fifteen spots on the team seemed like mathematics at its most basic, but of course things weren't that easy.  When I asked the class who wanted to join the team, everyone said yes except for Kathleen, and everyone was supposed to register over the long weekend a few weeks ago.  By the Monday, only three people had registered:  Jessica, Adrian, and myself.  In addition, Ferdie decided he didn't want to participate after all, although Kathleen decided she did want to be involved so we still had a net membership of fourteen.  Little by little I managed to goad more people into remembering to register (likely annoying everyone in the process), and Mr. Broderick agreed to both be our teacher supervisor, and also register for our team to fill the remaining position.  However, things still weren't kosher.  A few days later Sue and Sarah followed Ferdie's lead in deciding that GISHWHES wasn't the thing for them, and our team was once again short, this time by two members (and to make matters worse, only six of us were registered by this point).  So with the help of Jessica I turned to the grade 12 class for help, and Aaron and my brother Michael immediately volunteered.  I was hesitant to allow my brother to join the team, as it felt like he just wanted to ride along for some easy CAS instead of actually participating, but I was pressured into letting him join lest looking like a complete jerk.  Sarah (a different one this time) was also interested, so I told her to put her name down and we could probably find her a spot.  Afterwards I went to talk to Mr. Broderick, who hadn't yet registered, and told him that he didn't have to, since we found another student (Sarah) to take the final position.  By the next day we had in theory a full team of fifteen and eleven people registered, so all the chaos seemed to be over.  As you can probably guess, it wasn't.  Michael bailed, even after he had assured me he'd be committed, and our team was once again left one member short.  I went back to the grade twelve class since there seemed to have been quite a bit of interest the first time and I believed I'd be able to find someone who wanted to participate.  I was right on both counts:  the class was full of people who wanted to be a part of GISHWHES.  So much so that they had decided to make their own team.  If Michael hadn't hogged that spot I would have gotten one of them on our team the first time I was there, but I'm not bitter.  Not at all.  Anyway, we went back to Mr. Broderick and asked him sheepishly if he would in fact register (it was especially awkward since we had originally told him not to register, then we told him to, then we told him not to, and here we were telling him to again), but he agreed, and over the course of the next few days our final team members registered and our team was full, just a mere 48 hours shy of the registration deadline.  Since then things have gone a bit smoother, although I've had to organize a meeting for tomorrow and talk to teachers to make sure the date was clear of other IB activities (our IB coordinator was planning a working lunch), and I've had to field everyone's questions, comments, and concerns, although I don't mind doing that at all.  Anything that fosters excitement for GISHWHES is fine by me, and hopefully everyone will be motivated over the event and I won't have to poke and prod people to participate.  I'm so excited for the hunt, and I hope everyone else is too!