So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night....

Well, here we are at the end of the Communication in the Sciences paper – 119.155.  Having previously enrolled in this paper at the end of 2015 but withdrew, I knew what this paper entailed; group work consisting of a report and a seminar.  None of that made me jump for joy, not even a little.  I dreaded this paper and I probably still would have, had it not been for my team.  Somehow the universe aligned me with a great bunch of people who worked together extremely well.

Prior to the paper starting, I was silently lurking behind my keyboard as different groups found each other.  I thought I had better make my move before I was left as a dreg on the bottom of the ‘communication’ cup.  When Jess put up her post, I jumped on it as fast as I could.

In the beginning

We came together early as we had found our group before the course officially started.  We had a dry run with a skype session which was rather nerve racking, because most of us seemed to be introverted and reluctant to say too much.  We didn’t know then what roles we would play in the group or even that there were roles but we needed a leader.  Jess stepped up which immediately put me at ease knowing that people weren’t going to see my inadequacies had I been picked for that role. This inadvertently put me in a role that now I’m aware of it, I have definitely taken in a lot of instances, monitor evaluator; as to not seem overbearing (a nemesis trait of mine).  It was a role that at times, made me very neurotic.

Every Tuesday, we would skype on big issues and Facebook forum the details.  As I’ve said in a previous blog, if an issue came up, we would discuss it, vote on it and go with the consensus.  It couldn’t have been easier.

Team roles and how they were our strengths

Jess’ leadership style demonstrated traits of a co-ordinator because she was able to motivate and delegate without manipulation or the aggressiveness of a shaper.  The thing is though, while Jess was a fabulous leader and task-oriented, we didn’t actually need a leader as such so she often fell into the secondary role as completer/finisher, right down to the quality control she performed today before she submitting our presentation.

We have all demonstrated traits of the team worker over the course of the paper, which I found particularly comforting and the reason why I decided to continue on with this paper after my dismal grade on the Position paper; EVERYONE picked up the ‘crier’.

Floyd (still can’t get over his awesome name) had originally offered himself up as editor, which was then taken on by Alicia but after we took a vote on what three topics we liked the most, the work load was halved so that Alicia and Michelle shared the editor position.  This proved to be a great decision, as between them the nuts and bolts of the ethical framework and summarising the groups contributions, ended in a report and presentation we were all very proud of.  While Alicia had said that she wasn’t an ‘ideas’ person, she used to rock in like a specialist to bring her own brand of skill and knowledge that contributed to the team immensely. You knew when she said something, it was worth listening to.  Combine that with Michelle’s foresight, social glue, perceptiveness, and wonderful way of taking you away from the communication side of this course by entertaining us with her unusual creature blogs.

Floyd brought a sense of humour to the group that we needed to lighten the mood at times.  He never seemed flustered, even at pressure times, which is why I saw him assume the completer/finisher role many times.  While he says he is introvert, I think he could quite easily be a co-ordinator.  As a team, we spent most of our time somewhere in between being team workers and completer/finishers.  I believe this worked in our favour.

Team weaknesses

Location was the biggest hurdle due to time differences across the Tasman and maybe a life event or two, but they were very minor. Most weaknesses, in my opinion, were my personal ones; and I feel like I ended up overcoming many of them working with these fantastic human beings.

While I never want to repeat a paper like this one, I will recover from the mental anguish it has caused me over the past 9 weeks. The best thing to have come out of this paper has been that it has made me reconsider my opinion of working in groups.

Thanks team, I wish you all good luck for whatever the future holds.  It’s been a great pleasure to work with you all.