Together, Stronger

張貼日期：May 27, 2017 2:3:31 PM

Together, Stronger

Amy Chau

As an old saying goes, one blossom does not make a spring. Accordingly, one individual is not competent enough to handle a tangled problem. In my view, working with a group of people is better than working independently, both from the perspective of personal development and working efficiency.

On the one hand, working on a team is beneficial to the well-being of a person, in that it is an opportunity to cultivate interpersonal skills and leadership. Once you are in a group, it is not only you who are in the battle, for you could not be secluded from your allies. When fighting for the triumph of your mission, you have to know them, understand them and help them, pushing you forward to deal with people of various characters. In my case, I used to do all my presentations alone, while last semester, I was told by one of the professors to do a presentation in a group of five. At first, I was faced with a bunch of unfamiliar teammates, awkward and confused. However, it turned out that not only had we become a united league, but also I became a fast friend of them. Worried about the lagging of our presentation assignment, I decided to be the first one to break the ice. Subsequently, I bridged the communication gaps by establishing our group chat and also individually talking to each of my teammates. I made every effort to facilitate our work by giving suggestions as well as listening to others’ ideas. Occasionally, I would tell jokes to ease the tension brewed by unfamiliarity and intensive hard toil. During the process, I learned how to eliminate the embarrassment between me and people whom I was not so close to, I learned how to listen with an attentive ear, how to respect each other’s difference, and more importantly, how to make friends through intercommunication. Apart from the attainment of socializing knowledge, I also practiced my leadership. With my initiative, every one paid attention to my original opinions and plans for allocation; with my affability, my teammates happily followed my lead; with my diligence, they all tightened their strings without lousiness. After the presentation, they all credited me as a good leader, which I had never imagined before. Thanks to this group work, I gained the precious experience of getting along with my comrades and how to act at the helm.

On the other hand, the efficiency of working together as a group is evidently higher than working independently, in terms of the time spent on work and its quality. I witnessed how working efficiency sharply increased with group power. It went like this. During the Chinese New Year, my family has the tradition of inviting every household of our relatives for a gathering dinner. When my stepmother first joined our family, she could not speak nor understand our local dialect. As a result, she was alienated from my aunts who only speak in our dialect. Unfortunately, during every Spring Festival season, she would spend a whole week thinking over and deciding the menu. From the morning of New Year Eve to the time the dinner was served, it would take her over 30 hours to shop for groceries, wash the ingredients as well as cutting them and cooking them. I would always saw her being anxious and strained, and for once or twice, she even blew it. Luckily, as time went by, she learned to understand our dialect and also was blended into this big family, so during the busiest days, my aunts were all here to give her a hand: some would go to the market to buy ingredients; some of them helped her with chopping and cutting; some of them helped her keep an eye on soups or stew dishes. Consequently, she only spends half a day for preparation now. Moreover, as her anxiety vanished, she will not mess things up like she used to. We are also surprised to find that, with more different ideas and cooking methods fused in our New Year banquet by my aunts, the dishes have become more colorful and delicious. As can be seen from this example, working with people is both less time-consuming and quality-assuring.

From what I have learned from my own experience and observation, people tend to be more competent and the work tends to be more satisfying when we unite with each other. Hence, I think working in a group is much better than working alone.