Being a Freshman here at UAB has given me several memorable experiences I will never forget; a few being Freshman move-in, Homecoming, and fun events in the Bartow Arena. UAB has provided me with nothing but joy, but once I heard of the push for team building throughout the curriculum, I was not looking forward to it. One thing I have never liked in school has been group work. Sometimes you have one person bogged down with the responsibility of more work than another student which then becomes unfair. Seeing that several teachers are now engaging in team learning has always struck me as something I dreaded to be involved with. Because of the many efforts put toward these new team environments, they have completely changed my perception of team building in the classroom, and because of it, I have been immersed in a multicultural pool of knowledge and diversity. Seeing each of my classes push forth with some form of team building has helped me to not only continue to work well with others, but to also make new friends and learn about new cultures. With these new environments, I have noticed two very distinct things that have helped me not only to become a better student, but a better person as well.
As stated before, I did not enjoy the thought of collaborative learning. Because of this new team environment, it has given me something to look forward to when attending my Western Civilization course. In this course we have been put into teams that we have had since the first week of school. As a freshman who moved over 100 miles to come to here to UAB, I have very few friends here with me. With this new team environment laid out, my team members have become some of my best friends; not only in the classroom, but outside of it as well. Because of the team environment that UAB has put in place for classrooms across the campus, I have met some remarkable people. Luckily this is just one of the great benefits received from the application of this new environment.
Referring to my Western Civilization course, one of my main concerns of this new team environment was the lack of cohesion throughout the group’s workload. Professor Keitt created a great solution to this concern by having two quizzes for every testing session. Having two quizzes allows you as an individual to get the grade you deserved, but then applying the idea of collaborating learning with teammates afterwards for a group quiz. In this moment, the idea of collaborative learning is introduced which not only helps students, but also the professors. Hearing the same information coming from another’s perspective has proven itself to help me personally gather an in-depth knowledge of the previously taught material.
Having had unpleasant experiences with group projects in the past, I came into this new environment not expecting great things. As I continued to press through my mental block to enjoy this experience, I noticed more and more benefits. Being assigned to these groups gave me an opportunity to reach out to others, make friends, and still get the grade that I deserved. UAB has completely changed my mental perception of working in a team environment, and because of that, I am very appreciative.
It’s an entertaining feat to be pushed into a group with a few other people you’ve just met. When this would happen to me, especially during my undergraduate career, it would go splendidly well with no major issues (spoiler: this might’ve happened, once), or I would enter into a group that would make me feel like I was on a reality TV show. There were definitely a few times I found myself waiting for Dr. Watts to pop out from the shadows along with Ashton Kutcher to tell my team members and I that we’d been Punk’d. However disappointing, this never happened; so my team members and I had no other choice but to figure out how best to proceed. One specific group experience I had in an undergraduate course was when 4 other people and I (1 of whom was already a friend of mine – salvation!) had to write, film, and edit a PSA. As I was the only extrovert in the group, we came to an all but immediate decision to center the PSA around facts while capitalizing on one team member’s video editing talent – no acting necessary. Although it might’ve originally seemed we were “hiding” due to what many would classify as weakness (we were all camera shy), we actually ended up playing to our strengths by focusing on what would make this PSA something that could grab the attention of our target audience. We discussed the topic, a range of angles (both conceptually and visually) to take for the PSA, and threw in several creative cuts along the way. At the end of the project period, our professor was extremely impressed and actually showed the PSA as an example to the next semester class, and a good example of a PSA at that! By playing to our strengths in regards to research and creativity, we made a successful PSA without the acting necessary to create a conceptual narrative.
Another example of team-based learning I have experienced during my time at UAB took place in the outskirts of what we might normally categorize as academia: leadership. During undergrad, I was a member of the Global and Community Leadership Honors Program, or GCL. An integral part of GCL was each student’s involvement in leadership volunteer opportunities outside of the classroom (although they were often integrated into our classroom assignments and readings). One of the most interesting things I have done while at UAB was an extension of one of my GCL classes – I acted as a moderator in a community forum in one of Birmingham’s 99 neighborhoods. The forum focused on bullying among school-aged children and was open to the community. As a moderator, I made sure that the conversation stayed on topic and no particular individuals spoke too much/too little. Of course, with my being a sophomore in college, the prospect of keeping a room of concerned parents averaging at least 10 years older than me was a tad daunting. Luckily, I was one of three moderators and was able to tag team with the others to ensure the forum was a useful and collaborative experience for everyone there. In GCL, cohorts were traditionally broken up by year, so you certainly got to know your fellow honors students. Through the several service learning experiences we shared, we learned what it meant to serve as a group and how to act as a follower or as a leader when the time was right.
Teams are all different and they all serve separate purposes to add challenges, remove apprehension, or something in between. Freshman year, some friends and I became involved in what was essentially a Calculus I final survival group wherein we all studied well into the throes of hysteria. But being a part of the group was well worth it. We had the opportunity to discuss problems we were having, to take turns teaching one another, and to take advantage of having strong social support in a stressful stage of the learning process. We all made it through the final alive and well! (…only to be rewarded with Calculus II. Oh well.) So, although I have several negative memories of teams I have been a part of during my time at UAB, I must say that I learned how to be efficient with my and my group’s time in figuring out what strengths we could utilize from each person to help us through an assignment, a final, or even a semester.
Teamwork exists around us. It exists in the obvious places – work, marriage, sports, etc. However, it also exists silently – like keeping a door open when someone behind you is carrying a box, agreeing to wait in a line at a busy café, and so forth. In my experiences as a student and budding professional in engineering, teamwork has both been my greatest friend and obstacle. I do not believe that teamwork can only work perfectly or poorly with nothing in-between. It is always a journey and a learning experience. The great lessons about teamwork typically involve learning communication and adaptability. The greatest lesson is using each opportunity to grow and appreciate moments of teamwork – both the obvious and the silent occasions.
One major experience regarding teamwork at UAB was my engineering capstone during Fall ‘16 and Spring ‘17. It is a two-semester course where the purpose is to receive a proposal, create and budget the design with your randomly assigned team, perform testing, purchase parts, create a prototype, and then present the product. It is appropriately the summation of a student’s engineering experience at UAB. It was also perhaps the first and only time in my life so far where I felt visceral feelings of loathe. This project started with problematic elements – it was already planting seeds of doubt on how the task can be accomplished due to its unwieldy and ambitious scope, before we had even begun. My team started with low morale which continued to plummet as we progressed, sprinkled with feelings of fear that we would ruin our chances at graduating during the final lap of college and irritation that we did not have a compatible group dynamic.
Due to the rocky start and our lack of chemistry, our client would call us at night to rant about us and our failure to meet expectations, we would get on each other for failing to meet the group’s expectations, and… in summation, it was a mess. We were “that group” in our class, the one that got looks of sympathy and schadenfreude alike. However, things worked out – we had a product, passed the classes, and life continued onwards.
Those moments of frustration and abject fear were surprisingly valuable. We learned how to navigate through challenges together. Though we were all very different people with incompatible working habits, this unwieldy project molded us as a team. Instead of our individual voices being an annoyance, they became valuable, insightful. With a diverse team, you will have that frustration of incompatibility – but you will always have one person that will see each situation differently than the rest. And that voice can be invaluable.
In those moments as a team we truly learned and applied our patience, accountability, and adaptability. Strategy, sensitivity, and flexibility became our calling cards overnight due to the tangle of trying to please clients, order parts, and pass the class. There were the normal teamwork actions like trying to schedule our meetings; but then there were the small daily acts of teamwork that typically go unnoticed in our day-to-day living, such as basic consideration, truly dissecting differing opinions without saying “Seriously? This is your A-game? I am going home.”
Through these visible and invisible efforts, our ragtag team worked. Was it the best engineering product I can claim? Absolutely not. Was it a good experience? Well… I still get clammy with residual anxiety talking about my capstone. However, it was an incredible period of growth, adaptability, and patience – lessons that I will carry to my career in the nuclear industry.
Teamwork is not only critical to our success and sanity, even with its bouts of panic, but also our growth. Life is about cooperation, and it is filled with plenty of success as it is failure and fear. I learned to combine my hard skills as an engineer, while also developing soft skills that are not often touched upon in a classroom setting. We do not often work in teams where everyone is very different, but each individual has the same expectations of output that would be detailed in charts and reports. Though our differences were enraging at first, they became invaluable as we continued to work together. I am a firm believer that the greatest lessons about teamwork and ourselves are learned from difficult and challenging times – and UAB has given me moments of fear, success, community, and growth aplenty.
If I had written this last year, I would have told you that teamwork is a lie. I would have cynically argued that there are two broad classifications of people in the world: people who care, and people who don’t, and I would have observed that the people who do care are inevitably bundled up with a motley crew of do-nothings, people who prefer to stand (or rather, to sit, because standing requires far too much energy) idly by while their only driven team member does all the work. If I had written this last year, I would have told you that group assignments are pointless. I would have asserted that working independently is far more beneficial to everyone involved: nobody would be taken advantage of, and nobody would unfairly receive unearned credit. If I had written this last year, the page would have been speckled with sarcasm and cynicism, a testimony to my frustrations and a record of my inability to function on a team. It would have been an essay best stored in the bottom of a wastebasket.
Here’s the good news, though. I didn’t write this last year.
Looking back on those poor experiences, I now realize that each opportunity I’ve had to collaborate with others—whether good or bad—was beneficial to my growth as a student and as an individual. For instance, from having to complete assignments without the help of my team, I developed independence and the ability to be a self-starter. And from countless ignored texts in project group messages, I learned patience and self-control (if only I had a dollar for every passive aggressive message I drafted but never sent). From periodically assisting other group members with assignments, I learned the art of instruction and effective communication. I learned that when I have the ability to help someone understand, it’s my responsibility to do so—because one day, when the roles are reversed and I’m the one utterly confused, I hope I can count on others to do the same for me. Perhaps most importantly, though, from my many one-sided brainstorming sessions, I learned that sometimes it’s best to just shut up. Nobody has all the answers, and nobody is without fault. Working on a team emphasizes the importance of humility and mutual respect, and perhaps the reason why others don’t voice their opinions or contribute to the project is because they’ve never needed to. The simple act of asking, “What do you think we should do?” could be enough to coerce a brilliant thought or enough to promote participation from a group member.
I’m already seeing many of these lessons come to fruition in myself and my fellow classmates. Now, when I’m lost and confused in organic chemistry recitation, I can look to my group for assistance. Now, when I’m assigned a group assignment in my genetics class, I can trust my teammates to do their fair share and for the project to be a success. Now, when I message my organic chemistry lab group, I can count on timely, helpful responses. At this point, it seems everyone is more dedicated to mastering the material and united in our goal to succeed.
That’s the point of teamwork-based assignments and classes. Many can learn the hard skills of differentiation, reaction mechanisms, or computer-aided design modeling; but few can learn the soft skills associated with working effectively on a team. I’m thankful that this was included in the curriculum for many of my classes, for I don’t foresee needing those reaction mechanisms on a day-to-day basis in the professional realm; however, I do know I’ll need to know how to work on a team. Those lessons are invaluable to the aspiring professional.