Erin's Question

1. Have you ever worked in a group and felt that your identity and ideas were overshadowed by the other group members? How did you overcome this and show your individualism within the group?

There have been many times where I've worked in a group and my ideas have been overshadowed by the other group members. One incidence happened this semester when I was doing my group project for my HDFS class. We were trying to figure out a research question, and I was the only one giving out ideas but each time I suggested an idea they rejected it. So after putting my input in, and no one could come up with an idea they finally agreed on one of my topics. When we actually started working on the project there was one girl that was acting like a bitch and thought she was in control of everything and never wanted to listen to anyone else ideas but her own. In order for me to show my individualism I took charge of the poster because she had no idea what she was talking about. The other group members followed suit and helped me with the poster but when it came down to presenting, no one else still had an idea of what they were talking about. It was a good thing that the teacher graded up when I was presenting because I actually knew what I was talking about. I did the research and helped with the poster to overcome being shadowed by other group members. If I hadn't had done this, I don't think we would have gotten the grade we received.


INTERTEXT
Successful teams, like Tolstoy's happy families, may all seem alike,
friendly and intimate, with partners easily accessible to each other,
but the failures prove how hard collaboration can be. The most
typical obstacle is the inability to discuss and resolve conflict.

I like this intertext because it's definitely true. You can't be successful unless you can say that you had to go through obstacles and keep trying again because life isn't that easy. If it was, then there is something that you missed. In the end the team is successful because they know that they went through to get where they are and that's what matters the most.