Working in Groups: A Reflection

Probably the biggest thing I learned from working in groups this year was delegating. For our first two interviews we all went together to interview and then all tried to meet at the same time to edit. Scheduling was a headache and little issues like deciding which questions to ask became much more difficult with four voices involved. Furthermore there was lots of time where we didn’t need four people. Like in the actual interviews, three people kind of just sat there listening while the other interviewed. Editing was also much more difficult because we often had multiple people editing the same sentence at the same time in different ways. However I’m glad we actually did get to do the first few interviews together because we all got to bond on the ride to Thai Ling’s hometown and eat lunch with her family. It was nice to have those experiences together even if we weren't being the most efficient with our time.

For the later interviews we basically split the group in two, one UC student and one HANU student. I got to work with An twice and Thai Ling twice. Both people went to do the interviews and then the HANU student translated and the UC student edited. It worked out pretty well because scheduling was easier and it was a manageable amount of work for each person. It was also easier to formulate questions and make editing decisions because there were less opinions involved. However I’m glad that we didn't do the interviews individually because having two people from different backgrounds made the edited version more accessible to all audiences. I learned a ton from the editing mistakes I made like calling ling’s hometown a “village” and trying to figure out the proper name for youth organization the farmer was in.

The other thing I learned about working in groups was my style of leadership. In general I like to be in charge of things. With the interviewing I couldn’t really do this because I don’t speak Vietnamese, and tried my best to step back and then just shine when it came to the editing portion. However with the Nghe An fundraising this was a lot harder. Andrew and I basically ran the coffee shop. We made all the coffee, bought supplies calculated profits, figured out how to streamline things, taught other people how to make coffee tea etc. I liked the role of teaching people how to make coffee and organizing people to clean up. Delegating tasks in an efficient manner without being too bossy is something I like to do. However the part where I had a really hard time was when people who hadn’t been involved in the process came in, changed things and then wanted my help. In order to not bite people’s heads off I just had to trust that other people could handle things and take a break. One day I made the mistake of doing this at the end of the day and not leaving clear instructions for cleanup and then discovered that many of the things did not make it home. The next day I got a bit smarter and worked in the morning and then returned for cleanup so that I could make sure that all of our stuff made it home. I think it would have worked smother if we had defined tasks and knew what activities were happening what days in advance. Then I would have either felt in charge of something or not. However seeing as we had so little time to throw things together I think it turned out pretty well.