In today’s post I want to talk about my another blog site I did that with another international student. How we dealt with the team work during the whole semester and how we finished it from a huge distance. Compared to my Hungarian university It’s more a UL specific so it’s important to mention.
In the favourtite online exercises post I already mentioned the Social media and Society module but we focused on another assignment. But the main project for this module is also a blog. But it can built around any topic which could be interesting for other students too. The biggest difference between this blog and that blog is that I had to create it with another student.
In the beginning of my programme I heard that in UL there is a lot off group projects. If I want to compare it to my home university it’s a big difference even though we are doing group projects at home too but those are usually just only one short presentations, not whole term projects. I was hoping that I don’t have to work like this because everything was completely new for me and I was a bit afraid of working together with natives as my English is not good compared to them. I know one of the biggest advantages of a program like this is to meet with different people and get to know the natives where you are going but let’s be honest, most of us afraid of working together in teams like this and It’s normal to feel a bit anxcious about what if you will left out of the group and no one will care about you. Now I know that was nothing to worry about because I had only positive experiences but I guess I’ll always have some fears before group projects. So I already knew that probably I’ll have to work with others too and yes, in the first lab of this module we already had to get in pairs. I doesn’t care who will be my pair because I didn’t know anyone, I felt that maybe it would be a bit more comfortable with another international student because at least we understand each other as we are in the same situation but otherwise it doesn’t really matters. But my hopes became true and I got an other international student, a guy from Sweden.
We started to think about our topic immediately in the easiest way which also helped us get to know each other a bit and started to talk about what we are interested in. We had the ideas like philosophy, politics, football, hiking, reading and music. I think you can tell they are not the easiest to tone in with each. We had to realise that even if one of us interested in philosophy maybe it’s not that topic what students want to read about in their free time. Sport was the main common interest as both of us had experiences and we tought that it’s easy to make this topic interesting and approach it from different aspects.
Both of us had other things to do in the semester but I think even if we doesn’t communicate a much about it only when we met in the class or in the pub (i hope I supposed to write this down here) we could manage it well. I think that was an important way to do this that we always shared our ideas with each other and doesn’t make decisions without a cross-check. We knew what the other will write about and we could give some advices. None of us said no to the oter one’s post but at least we had the chance to say if we think it doesn’t fit to our concept.
Then you know both of us had to travel home but we still had to work with our blog so in the last 3 weeks we finished it talking on Facebook and send to the other one what we wrote. I think the result is good. Of course it could be better but personally I think we could collect interesting topics about doing a sport and we made it relevant for those too who are in a different field like us. And because my partner is now working as a coach it made it more interesting to have an aspect as an athlete and as a coach too. So yes, summarizing all I’m satisfied what we’ve done and with our team work too.
I know sometimes we are just unlucky with the partner who we get and it’s not always a pleasant experience but teachers should always be open for students requests if they don’t feel they are doing a good team with their partner (our teachers gave us the opportunity to change partners or do the project alone) but also students should give a chance to the person they got. Maybe they just had to know each other a little bit more and then it will work out. What I learned now is to be open as well for team works with strangers and always try to find a common point until it’s possible. So speak out if you don’t like the idea but if you do this try to advise a better idea or work on it to come up with one. It’s really annoying when someone reject the other’s idea but can’t tell a better or new one. The most important is to always give it a try to listen to the others.
Nowadays couldn’t be a better time to practice it all.:) Listen to each other and stay safe!
Journalism studies in Ireland 