To Team or Not to Team

     When it comes down the deciding what's best for an individual, you have to look at all the options and weigh the benefits and consequences. Firstly, what made me decide that I wanted to work alone, was trying to figure out how to do the Social Media Peer Account Assignment. It was all to confusing on an already confusing project. Out of all the people in the class, who was I supposed to chose to work on. I know a good amount of people from class, but looking over their social media got a little personal for a school assignment. After thorough research of my classmates social media, their was no real indication of desirable traits for collaboration. Although other classmates might have had a different outcome, it is pretty much assumed, being a user of social media, that most social media post have no correlation with showing off desirable group qualities. This has led me to conclude, through the Social Media Peer Account Assignment, that working with a group of people based off their social media is not beneficial to myself. 

    Also, we completed another team-building exercise called the Lost At Sea Assignment. Your goal for this was to come up with a grading of devices you would need if you were stranded at sea. We first picked our decisions then compared with other people. I didn't know anyone in my group, so it became apparent that awkward situations would pursue. I am generally a social butterfly, but when it comes to random group task I usually stay quiet. That was not the case in this situation. No one would talk, so I had to step in for the whole group. I would definitely say, and my group would agree, that I was the leader voice wise for the collaboration. As a group we determined together how we would rank as a team, and nobody took charge so most of the rankings were similar to mine. It was so bad that some people in the group barely talked at all. I wish they were more talkative, but you can't force someone to talk if they don't want to. In the end we all agreed on our rankings and then everyone went quiet until we were let back into class. If we were to do an assignment like that again, I would probably not collaborate with any of them. When working with other people, it is imperative to be a vocalizer to get things done. I realized that most people in my class aren't vocalizers. This is due mostly to the fact that they are all underclassman while I'm a upperclassman. So they probably expect me to do most of the talking, which seemed to be the case. From this experience, working in a bigger group was even more confusing than with a partner. 

    Overall, my experiences with these group assignments made me realize that not many people follow the five pillars that Becker discusses as "the five pillars of teamwork: trust, commitment, conflict, accountability, results." I received quite the contrary evidence of that statement. Cherry's,  "...Four Cs of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity" were not highlighted in any conversation that occurred during these task. If none of these actions come out from a team exercise, then they lack the team-building ability and would not be adequate partners.  On another note, Becker can even side with me because he says "trust has the biggest impact on a group" which means that if people don't show trust in collaboration, then the group will be impacted; if I work by myself, I will trust in myself, which the most important trait in a project. All of these ultimately made me decide to do the article by myself.