I have learned a lot about myself, school, and life throughout the last month. Coming into my final week of the spring 2020 semester, I feel tired. The University of Pittsburgh usually ends for the summer a week or so earlier than other universities and I am very thankful for that this year. Although I have only had to complete four weeks of online classes, it has felt longer than the first half of the spring semester. Quite honestly, it has been difficult to find the motivation to carry out assignments. I am taking six classes this semester, four of which are project-based classes where I am evaluated through group work. It is easier to complete group work because I do not want to let other people down but finding time for individual assignments has proven challenging. It is a bizarre situation, carrying on with school when I see and hear about so much death and destruction on the news and through my amazing healthcare worker relatives. A key lesson I have learned is the importance of taking a break. I allowed my mind to warm up to school again. I did not push myself too hard to complete assignments and do schoolwork if I did not feel like I was in the proper headspace for it. I have never been someone to hand in poorly done work just for the sake of turning it in. So, I allowed motivation to naturally develop and took advantage of moments it did to focus on school. This experience has also allowed me to reconnect with a couple of old hobbies such as editorial makeup and styling. Having a creative outlet where I am making use of my brain in an enjoyable way has helped me feel ready to work again.

A lesson that I already thought I understood but have now gained a new understanding of is the importance of communication. Now that we are not seeing each other physically in class twice a week, there is little accountability to complete group work. As previously stated, I am taking four project classes right now and it is vital that all members continuously communicate despite the switch to remote learning. I have not run into issues with my Trinidad team, but other group projects, some people do not do their part. Communicating needs wants, and goals when collaborating with others is instrumental to the success of projects.

In my previous blog, I discussed how I have built deeper adaptability and flexibility skills through the disruption of COVID-19. But another transferrable skill that I have more recently noticed is time management. In the past, when I have had issues with time management, it has been because I was too busy and felt overworked. I did not feel like there were enough hours in the day to get things done. Now, I have the opposite problem. There is so much time available to me that it is easy to push things off. To combat this, I have attempted to create a morning routine for myself as a way to signal to my brain that it is time to do work. I wake up, make coffee and pancakes and sit in the corner of my living room with my laptop. I choose two or three things from my to-do list and that will be my tasks for the day. In the future, in my professional life, there will inevitably be days that I do not feel like doing work. There will be too many distractions or too many tasks. By starting my day, with a setlist of things I want to accomplish I will have more structure in my life. I never did this during regular school because I always felt like I had my days already set up for me. But having a small list has helped me become more productive and efficient.

The work my team and I have been continuing for the Trinidad service-learning consulting project shows our perseverance and strong team dynamic. This was already an interesting year of the 10-year plan as it was a client transition year. The three groups that traveled to Trinidad before us spent the majority of their time in Matelot, Trinidad working with the DORCAS Women’s Group. In our original scope of work, our team had one deliverable on DORCAS. It was a partnership analysis that would have been based on primary research conducted in-country through conversations and relationship building. Our team has not had any electronic communication with anyone from DORCAS and we were only going to be spending a few days in Matelot with them. While in Matelot we were also going to have the opportunity to meet with students from the local high school to hear their ideas on how to improve their community. Unfortunately, all of that in-person communication has been lost and we had to remove the partnership analysis from our updated scope of work. Because previous groups had spent a lot of time with the women of DORCAS, Pitt already had an existing relationship with them which will be able to be preserved for next year’s group. The major shift in this year’s strategic goals was working in-depth with Nature Seekers. Last year’s team visited Matura to meet a few representatives from Nature Seekers and see their organization in person. However, they did not do any consulting work with them. Our team would have been the first to initiate a deeper relationship through the deliverables we are working on for them but more importantly, the two days we were going to be in Matura with them. The two deliverables, the best practices report and a marketing audit and plan, will still be accomplished and handed over before the end of the semester. And, we were previously able to have one phone call and some email communication with representatives from Nature Seekers. But we, unfortunately, lost the chance to develop a deeper relationship through in-country conversations and interaction. Hopefully, the work my team will complete for them this year will establish a good reputation for next year’s student consulting team to travel abroad and strengthen our ties with Nature Seekers.

This is a project that I see myself bringing up in the majority of my future professional interviews. I will describe it as a challenging experience, but one that grew me as a student and a young professional. I signed up for a group consulting project with an international trip and I got a group consulting project. But that is okay. It taught me how to adapt and move forward which is a necessary skill throughout a professional career. Things rarely go as planned but this project is an example of how one can turn obstacles into success.

As far as my advice to future groups, the first thing they should know and recognized is how dedicated our clients are to their organizations. Both DORCAS Women’s Group and Nature Seekers do the work that they do to make their beloved country better for their communities. I was devasted that I was not able to meet the people behind the organizations in person but through reading the previous group’s blog posts and our short virtual interactions, their dedication comes through. I feel privileged that I had the opportunity to collaborate with my team members on a project and deliverables for these organizations. I hope to one day get to experience ecotourism for myself. Secondly, use your resources, you have access to more information than you realize. This is a semester-long project and at the beginning of the semester, it can seem fairly daunting and unattainable. I was not sure if I would be able to complete the project when I initially found out all that was required of us. This is the biggest project I have worked on in my academic career and I got through it with the help of the resources at Pitt Business. Besides my teammates, assistance from Bryan, Hillary, and Meade was vital to the completion of our project. The first month of the semester when my team was putting together our scope, we were doing the grunt of the work creating the document. But through our conversations with the Pitt Business faculty and staff, the scoping process became a learning process. I know have newly gained knowledge of how to create a solid scope and stick to it. And lastly, to future groups, have fun with it. This is a truly unique opportunity and class. Experimental learning and active reflection are things you will hear a lot about in class. Even though my group did not get to go abroad, this was a hands-on experience. The fun of it came from working on a project, unlike any I had done before, with a group of people that were just as clueless as I was at the beginning. We had to work as one unit, figuring out how we would do the fourth year of the ten-year plan justice. And I sincerely believe we did.  H2P