wOw.... It had been hectic these two weeks since school reopened after the mid semester break. But I am glad we (my team) are still surviving!
It had definitely been a great experience working on this research project with a group of friends whom we started off as strangers. Different people have different style of working. Some may choose to work fast while some may prefer to work slowly at their own pace. As such, the research project had taught me to adapt to different individual's style of working, making me a more flexible and accommodating person.
Throughout the course of this research paper, the one major problem we had was the lack of time. We were practically rushing through each draft to meet the submission dateline. This was probably due to other work commitments that we had on hand. As a result, we were unable to focus our attention on this project and the end product was rather sketchy. Also, it was hard getting everyone to meet on a common day due to our timetable clashes. I guess ultimately, it was a test of our time management skills, having to juggle all our commitments at one shot.
Having 4 people in a team might be an added advantage in terms of manpower. But at the same time, having so many different conflicting ideas during a meeting was quite a hindrance and made decision making difficult at times. In addition, because of the clashes in our timetables, we resorted to online meetings over MSN a couple of times. Usually these meetings would be held at around mid night. This was probably one of the aspects of this project that should not be promoted. Through this channel of communication, we had a couple of misunderstandings with regards to duty allocation. It was inefficient as most of us were tired from the long day we had and it was simply not productive. To complicate the situation further, non verbal cues kicked in.
Overall, I would say that it had been an enriching experience having to complete a professional research paper in such a short period of time. It was pleasant working with 3 of my team mates Jia hwa, Dai jing and Chen xin. Communication wasn't really a major problem for the four of us as we were very open minded and accommodating. I feel that this is a trait of my team worth mentioning as it made us a better team. We were very frank and open with regards to our comments and everyone took it positively. In doing so, we built a strong mutual understanding among the four of us. This enabled us to work efficiently as a team as we grew to know each other's expectation better. =)
