UCHANU: group work

With UCHANU and Service Learning, I've had a lot of experience with group work this semester.
UCHANU:
I feel like our project team (Fantastic Năm) has worked really smoothly as a group this semester. This has in large part been because our personalities mesh well and we all have the same goals--to put geniune effort into our work and to learn something. One thing that has really helped us work together has been our division of labor and organization. We have pretty much always had the same process, so it goes really smoothly: for each interview, one person transcribes it (Phương or Khương), one person translates it into English (Katie or Vĩ), and one person does final edits to make sure everything sounds good and makes sense. Also, I have the role of sending out emails about due dates, etc. when appropriate.

Service Learning:
One consistent challenge for the Xa Mẹ team has been issues relating to language. Me, Kristine, John, and Thuy Linh (who joined our group part-way through the semester) all have different levels of Vietnamese ability, and we have been working on effectively dealing with this challenge all semester. A major issue earlier in the semester was Kristine feeling overwhelmed about the role she was put in as the most fluent Vietnamese speaker--we just depended on her too much to do too much. I received feedback from both John and Kristine that I should try to handle situations on my own more, instead of always looking to them for translation help. Kristine in particular has really pushed me to push myself in terms of taking the initiative to learn what I need to know and to communicate on my own. Over the course of the semester, as my Vietnamese has improved, this has become a lot easier. I now ask John and Kristine for help pretty rarely, and communicate with the kids and deal with problems on my own whenever possible. This situation has pushed me to think more creatively about how to communicate, and has given me a lot of motivation to improve my Vietnamese. The communication issue is always a challenge, and I think we've worked really hard together to give feedback and work on finding a good balance over the course of the semester. It's been a long process--not something that was "solved" after one conversation or meeting. Our discussions about issues relating to communication have really helped me to understand how important really listening to group members and valuing their thoughts and feelings is. Even though we've faced a lot of challenges and things have not always gone smoothly, I really appreciate having this opportunity to develop group work skills.

Reflecting on myself:
Because I have a personality where I like to be in control and tend to feel strongly about doing things a certain way, my main challenge in working in a group is to step back, listen to other people's ideas, and compromise. I really feel like I have gotten a lot better at doing this this semester. The fact that my Vietnamese is so limited has put me in a more following and conceding role than I would have felt comfortable with in the past. But, this has definitely been a good thing because the situation has really forced me to allow other people to take control more and have more leadership in different situations. I have found that, of course, my ideas are not always the best ones, and that I'm not always right. It has definitely been healthy to get used to doing things the way other people prefer and seeing what happens.
I also think it's been really useful to think about what my strengths are and how I can be useful in a group, especially when speaking Vietnamese is so important in both of my group situations. I've learned that when you put thought into it, there's almost always a way to divide up work to make things easier for everyone as a whole. It's also really important that everyone has a voice and that a group continues to communicate and negotiate until everyone feels as comfortable as possible with their roles and what's expected of them.