Today’s lectorial focused on collaboration skills, before delving into some brief details for Project Brief #3. I’m not going to lie; I avoid group work like the plague. I love working as a TEAM, but unfortunately that almost never happens. There is always someone who doesn’t pull their weight, and the others are left to carry the burden of their own part and that of the slacker. Outside of Uni, I am part of a film collaboration group, and while I love it, it causes endless frustration for me. As humans, we like to be recognised for the work we do, so when somebody else is also given recognition for YOUR hard work, it is often infuriating.

Various skills such as initiative and enterprise, experience and knowledge of technology and learning were discussed in today’s lectorial, but the one that stood out to me was communication. When working on your delegated share of a task, it can be tricky to remember that the final piece must be presented as a whole, and thus the separate parts need to be coherent and fluid when put together. Whether it be through social media, phone calls or texts, communication will be a vital component of our Project Brief #4, and I hope this will not be an issue in my group. In year 12 I undertook Drama 3/4 and for 20% of our final grade we were asked to present an Ensemble showcase in groups. We were to communicate with our other group members via a blog portfolio so that our teacher could monitor our progress. In theory, the collaboration seemed simple, in practice, it was anything but. One of our group members claimed she could not do any rehearsals outside of school hours, and rarely came to class or lunchtime rehearsals. We each made numerous posts explaining what she had missed, hoping she would read them, but during the performance it became evident she had not. It was clear to both our teacher and the audience that she had not been communicating with us- she froze several times during the performance before remembering her part, she went to act out a scene we had cut several weeks earlier and when we had to reflect on our performance she did not even know which performance style we had been allotted. Fortunately for us, her poor effort did not reflect on our grades, but she genuinely believed she had put in as much effort as us.I am keen to avoid another situation as it caused unnecessary stress during an already tense year, not to mention it wasted a lot of time in us trying to make sure she understood what had been changed.

Nonetheless, I will try and put my bad experiences aside and as always, strive to do the best in my group. I know I can become quite controlling so I am going to try to recognise instances when I may be acting like this and eliminate them so that hopefully we can develop a good group environment which aids our productivity.