My Past and Ongoing Experience with Collaboration by Alan Castillo

History has proven that collaboration has been, and will undoubtedly continue to be, an essential aspect of human civilization that allows us to make efficient progress towards a better tomorrow. For that reason, it is necessary that future generations will continue to grasp this idea and be well-experienced in the process of collaborative efforts. Though this is clear for me now more than ever, I can admit that my past self had never been too thrilled about the idea of having to work with others. As a child, I would almost always prefer to take on personal pursuits independently, free from anyone else’s involvement. For example, I used to love making arts and crafts during my childhood; however, if anyone ever attempted to assist me in any way, I would often become upset despite their generous intentions. As far as I was concerned, anyone else’s involvement would merely tarnish whatever I was making. Unfortunately, this applied to more than just the previous example, ultimately affecting my general willingness the receive help in several cases. This arrogant way of thinking led me to believe that I was better than the rest, and that I had absolutely nothing to gain from the input provided from others besides myself.

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Anyone could see that my previous attitude towards even the most basic form of collaboration was a harmful one to have. The mere thought of being able to do everything independently is ridiculous, as there has never been a single person capable of excelling at whatever task comes their way. Realistically with time and experience, most of us will gradually build our own sets of skills which we can then proceed to apply towards our lives in whatever ways we see fit. Of course, everyone’s individual skills will vary in certain regards, which is why we look to others to assist us in ways that we couldn’t possibly hope to achieve on our own. Geoff Colvin’s reading, which we were assigned earlier this semester, further discusses how collaboration only becomes increasingly necessary as a result of our inevitable limitations, stating that “as knowledge increases, people must specialize in narrower slices of it to achieve mastery. For almost any given problem, more people's contributions are required to find the best response.” Because of this, anyone looking towards self-improvement must be willing to accept their imperfections and be willing to collaborate under circumstances that call for it.

Fortunately, I was soon able to grow out of this stage of stubbornness and eventually became more welcoming towards collaboration as a whole. Though I no longer felt entirely obliged to do everything on my own, it still proved difficult at times to completely escape my longing for independence. Because of this, I ended up feeling being a bit of shock during my older days of childhood after I began to notice just how frequently my teachers were requiring me to collaborate with peers at school. It couldn’t help but find it hard to adjust, especially when being put into larger groups that required each of us to contribute in our own ways. I wasn’t used to this process of getting work done, and often found myself questioning why it was even necessary to begin with. What exactly was I, as a student, able to gain from this?

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To answer this question, I think it would be useful to first reference our reading that focuses on group dynamics. Within all functioning groups, including those formed within classrooms, there happens to be several key aspects present that allow collaboration to properly occur amongst its members. For example, it is necessary for there to be a degree of interactions that take place amongst a group; otherwise, it would be impossible for any actual progress to be made. This progress ultimately leads to the group reaching their goal/objective that they either set out to achieve themselves or were assigned to complete by an individual outside of the group. While this all seems like common sense, the aforementioned aspects happen to be ones that many, including myself, have shown to struggle with when being placed into situations that call for collaboration. Because of this, it is essential for individuals to learn how to properly collaborate starting early. A school’s primary function is to prepare its students for the real world that waits ahead of them; therefore, learning to collaborate for assignments both in and out of class will give students a good amount of experience beforehand. This video also helps to show further functions that can come from the implementation of group work in a classroom setting.

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Naturally, this became more clear to me as I progressed through my years in schooling. Still, even to this day, I wouldn’t consider myself to be a “master” in collaborating (I’m far from it, in fact). Like many others, there are still aspects that I struggle with when having to work in groups. Because of this, this course in particular caught my interest, as I felt that it would be a good way to step out of my comfort zone and continue to develop my collaborative skills. Luckily, I found that it has done just that, seeing as how it has offered me, on multiple occasions so far, situations in which I could cooperate with my fellow peers. Also, because of this course, my eyes have been opened to so many new concepts relating to collaboration itself and what exactly makes it work. One concept introduced to me within this past semester that really stuck out to me so far was Tuckman’s Five Stages of Group Development. Learning about this allowed me to see the several steps that are often present within the collective process of group participation. Said steps go as follows: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning. It was interesting to learn of the hidden complexities behind each stage, as well as how groups can manage to progress from one to the other. Being able to apply this to a fictional group, as well as my own group, proved useful in giving me an even deeper understanding behind how this can be applicable in real world scenarios. I hope to continue learning concepts such as this in order to continue refining my own personal collaborative methods.