Self-Reflection
I am proud of many things about myself this semester and the adventure I have undertaken this year. But in relation to this course some of the most important things I’ve done are:
· Helping my team improve their language skills and vocabulary
· A huge role in helping organization and splitting of group work at the beginning
· Helping my team resolve conflict, and ensuring I resolve my own conflicts when they arise.
· I am proud that I knew when to stand back and when to help out.
· I am proud that despite other time constraints we managed to make group meetings every week to ensure completion of assignments
· I am proud that with the assignment where we had to use marketing tools that I was able to use my own marketing experience in the course to allow us to get some excellent information about our target market.
· I am proud that we came up with an idea and personally that we managed to innovate the idea to something at least none of us had ever heard of before.
While many things went excellently to be honest everyone has their downfalls, and mine are as dissastorous as the next person
· I am disappointed that I lost momentum and commitment to the course towards the end. At the beginning I was forward planning and ensured to take initiative, whereas now Paula has reached a much more crucial standpoint in the group which I held more at the beginning
· I did not perform well with the assignments by forgetting to complete tasks continuously and trying to cram in several tasks in one day.
· I am unsure as to whether we truly did focus on an individual idea too early or if the right idea just happened to present itself to us so early.
Throughout this course I learned a variety of things in a variety of manners:
· Teamwork is completely dependent on who everyone is as individuals
· We were so lucky with our team that team work was not an issue and when someone was slacking if asked they renewed their commitment and came through.
· I learned that time management and incremental work is vital for a course with such a large amount of individual and group assignments
· I learned that the best way to do a group assignment is to ensure everyone is happy with their role in the assignment.
· I learned that an innovation process is detailed and grueling. It takes a long time to figure out if your idea will work and isn’t as simple as just posting a survey. (I.e. I get why companies pay other companies to do this !)
What I would like to do to change my performance in this course would be mainly to do with workload and motivation. I would try to keep my motivation going throughout the course as opposed to ‘burning out’ towards the end of this process. I feel that to do this I would need to be more prepared to follow through or even choose an idea that would be simpler to make into a reality. In regards to the assignments I feel overall that I managed the time pretty effectively however I would love to be able to put more time and effort into each and every one. At the same time I wonder if I should have made the individual ones shorter as they’re sometimes quite long! Finally with the innovation process I would like to see what happens if we were to not choose an idea so early on. The thing is that throughout this course our ideas within the festival changed themselves, and I did everything I could to keep my mind open to changing it to other things (a Tom of Finland salon in Turku, a Tom of Finland Hotel, etc. ) but I feel that the true point of this ourse was to embrace the unknown.
The First Workshop
Within the first workshop there was a variety of emotions. Excitement at this new experience of a class, nervousness as you’re thrown in a group with no idea what to expect, and exhaustion as the day lasted forever (while still being filled with bubbly enjoyment). But within all of this I found the following in my own notes:
3 Things I don’t like doing that I want to try and do on this course
- Complete the finer details — Attention to detail
- Working out the details in a group as opposed to individually
- Learn about Finland
I will admit I have no recollection of writing this, but am really intrigued. I feel like a paid more attention to detail but definitely not enough, as stated above, I feel that the main problem is a start off with an idea so complicated I can never get to the end in a way that satisfies my need for quality. In regards to the group collaboration, this course has definitely been my best for that. The style of the tasks meant that a lot of them couldn’t be divided in to individual tasks and that we had to collaborate in order to make things work. I still feel that I may have put down other people’s ideas too often and am unsure whether that stems from whether the ideas wouldn’t work with our innovation or if my own mind wasn’t open enough to adapt the ideas.
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The one thing that has been an undeniable occurrence is that I have learned more about Finland. Its impossible to look into Tom of Finland or complete the tasks asked without knowning Finland. From the funny sports, to the coffee obsession, to the life of Tom of Finland, its been an impressive ride.
Overall I feel I made a distinct step towards reaching these goals and that I managed to successfully reach two of the three, and a baby step towards the third.
My Person is Mai (Person)
Mai is an amazing and impressive person who has gone to make her own way in the world and endeavours to do all the things that frightens me in the world. She is an amazing team player and is great for coming up with ideas. Her editing skills for pictures, and her photography is incredibly impressive and I’ve never felt so lucky to meet someone. She’s easy to get along with and a hard worker.
Within the assignments she always did her part and even did more than asked. Her work was always quality and she was always good at helping us figure out what we should do next. In regards to the innovation process she was just as confused as the rest of us but often had really good ideas and innovations to add to the festival idea.
I feel like Mai is the person that tries to do as much as possible and my only advice for her would be to take on less of a workload! However as a final year student she has a lot of stuff to do no matter what! But overall I can’t think of any improvement for her to make because she was helpful, collaborative, inventive, and open to suggestion.
ANETA’S OPINION ON WHETHER I SUCCEEDED AT MY GOALS:
Pay attention to detail: “Yes definitely paid attention to detail. I feel that you were very involved in every assignment and did your best in every single one of them.”
Working in a group as opposed to individual: “I guess you were trying to get our points of view across as well but I feel that through all of this time you were a leader anyways. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Like when we were kind of lost you were on top of things”
Learn more about Finland: “Of course.”
