The Importance of Group Work

On the first day of class for this course, I learned how important it is to work well in groups. The excercise we did of passing the rubber balls around and trying to cut our time in half helped me to see how difficult or how long it would have taken for just one person to come to the conclusion that eventually solved our dilemma. One person would mention a certain method that would inspire another person to come up with another idea and so on. What was interesting to me was that once the rules were laid out, we initially tried to make the first method altered to meet the requirements, rather than thinking of an entirely new method that still followed the rules. With each new wave of ideas we collectively eliminated ones that either broke the rules or seemed inefficient. There were not too many people that strongly opposed to a decision we made or too set on their own idea to accept another's.

This is a really important lesson to use in the real world/work environment. Although it may sometimes seem better or prefferred to work alone, it is so much more effecient to have many minds thinking of a solution to the problem rather than just one. People's different perspectives and backgrounds can influence the way that they think or make decisions, and this plays a big role in the way that a team functions or solves problems. Overall, I would say I feel mor ecomfortable working alone, just because I can be very shy at time, but I know that I cannot always get the job done in the best way when working alone. This is why I am able to force myself to be more social or acitve in groups, because I know that it is for the benefit of the cause.