To Team or Not to Team

After all the activities that we did in class and plenty of thinking, I can now conclude that working with another partner is the best choice for me. Some of the activities we did in class was "Lost at Sea". In this activity we were able to choose the person or people we wanted to work on our project with. The activity was about being lost at sea and having fifteen different items to choose from. From here we were supposed to rank all the items as 1 being the most important to 15 being the least important independently. We compared our choices and decided to rank the items again and discuss which ones were the most important and least important as a group. After discussing we were able to see if either working independently or together was the best suit for us. This activity showed me that working with a partner is what i liked most because I was able to listen to their perspectives and why they thought the way they did. We were also able to agree and understand each other on choosing what items were important and not. The other activity was called "Social Media Peer Account" where we had to research a bit on our partner with Facebook or Instagram and analyze what they would post. I can tell my partner cares for his friends the most. Two articles that have also helped me made my decision to work with a partner were "Team building and group dynamics: creating and fostering a culture of teamwork requires trust, collaboration, and accountability, " and "Songwriting loafing or creative collaboration?: A comparison of individual and team written billboard hits in the USA." The first article talks about the five behaviors a group must have in order to be successful. These five behaviors are: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results. Using the five behaviors can help team members or partners not only understand each other but to also be comfortable disagreeing with one another. In the other article it talks about how music is an important aspect to social psychology and how it is related to social identity, personality and much more. There have been many famous artists and groups where they have been the top artists of the billboards. One benefit of being in a group was the expansion of creativity, new lyrics, different perspectives on songs and lyrics. In the article it says that The Beatles worked together and came with the outcomes of many benefits. Some of the benefits were creativity, better choices for lyrics, harmonizing and more.- Pettijohn After this experience I am beyond confident with my decision. I've known my partner since last year and he is a very hard worker and intelligent and has very good time management. Due to knowing him for a year, I feel very comfortable with being able to speak about my opinions even if it means saying "no". We both understand each other, and we try to find the best solutions to schoolwork problems. I also have realized that I enjoy being able to hear others' thoughts and expand our creativity to make things the best as they can be. Not only will I be learning new things, so will my partner.