1 ) I am going to try my best to summarize all I have learned this semester into one paragraph, but obviously that’s really hard so I am going to hit the main points. I would say the reading that had the biggest effect on me was the “Points of Discomfort” text where they touched on the “agitated interactions” they had while their school was on their trip. I think this reading set me up to understand how to handle certain situations that may arise while in PR and to take into consideration more of the people around me while there. As much as this trip was for us to go and experience and learn about PR, it was not a trip to act like a rude tourist that doesn’t take into consideration the locals and the amount of effort Caras put into this trip for us. I think it’s always good to be reminded to think before you act and or think before you speak, and this reading did just that. Another reading that I can see its findings better now that the class is complete is “Comparing the Effects of Community Service and Service Learning”. In this reading it talked about all the benefits that come to students who participate in service learning versus just community service. Not that I did not believe the findings before, however, after actually going on the trip and continuing our “consulting”, I can much more clearly see all the positive effects this trip has had on me and completely agree with the findings that this has made me a better critical thinker as we’ve had to pivot quite a few times in person on the trip along with going through the project as a whole. Many things changed and working as a group made us have to work together and offer up new ideas to fix the problem and obviously, we don’t have much time as this is a one semester class, so we had to be quick on our feet. This class has also definitely made me a better writer as Bryan has helped me notice where I am being too vague and not giving enough detail, or when I am adding too much fluff and just need to say the point clearly for everyone to understand.
When comparing my thoughts now to my old blogs they line up weirdly exactly as I thought they would. I just reread the last paragraph of my first blog and in the paragraph above I touched on basically everything I thought this trip would help me with. This include critical thinking, problem solving, working on multiple teams, and it was 100% an experience that improved me both personally and professionally. I just reread blog #2 and it is funny to look back at it, as I was talking about Caras and was so excited to be able to go to Puerto Rico and meet them and see them in their entirety in person as reading online can only do so much. I can tell that I didn’t 100% know what I was talking about, but it is cool to see my thoughts from before the trip and see that all my hopes were met and even exceeded while on the trip as now, I can say the trip was such a blast and we had so much fun together with the Caras crew.
2 ) I would say the biggest transferrable skill is the ability to be put into a new big group and get straight to work. As I move into the corporate world that is what my life is going to be so getting just a taste of it with this project has set me up for success, because I have seen what it takes to be a part of a successful group. Whether that be taking a back seat in some instances or taking the lead in others, to being able to work with people in all different backgrounds. We have some global management, marketing, environmental science, and finance majors all working together and with that it showed me that a successful group needs diversity because different people with different backgrounds have different useful skillsets and coming together with our skillsets is what made us work as a good team. Going into my internship I believe I will have a leg up because of this and also it showed me how to better gel the group together. By that I mean it’s always awkward at first with a new group and new people, however, this class showed me it is important to break the ice as fast as possible and get to know your team quickly because the better you know them the better you work together.
3 ) The relationship that Pitt already had with the client did nothing but help our deliverables in my opinion. The people at Caras said they loved working with Pitt students as they always have come prepared and were easy to work with, so them already thinking positively of us is obviously a good thing in a relationship. I think us continuing this project will just keep this relationship moving in the right direction. We got along with the employees of Caras very well and personally I think showed we care a lot about them and have worked hard on this project to hopefully help them. We haven’t achieved our ultimate goal of getting a new client for them, which they might be disappointed in us in but hopefully our work can help future groups better succeed at that objective.
4 ) I would explain this project in an interview by running them through an overview of what we did for the project as a whole. In an interview you don’t want to ramble on, so I would try and use the STAR method. So, first I would set the scene on the class and who CARAS is, then I would tell them our task at hand of trying to get more clients to work with them, I then would tell them about how we set up our deliverables, how we achieved them, and how we had to switch them and think on our feet to best accomplish them. As in a work setting things are constantly changing and I think they would like to see that we were able to change with the problems that arose during the semester and how we adapted. I would finish it up with telling them our final results and just what an awesome experience it was from start to finish. I would also want to demonstrate what skills this helped me grow and how it would help me in a work setting. I think this project is something very similar to how an actual job may go. You get paired with members of your company and are given a set objective that you guys need to complete and from there the group needs to work together and figure it out. I wouldn’t say I was a leader in this group as I think Barb was. However, I would say it helped me emphasize that a leader should not have to tell you what needs to get done, and that I think I did very well at going forth on my own and completing tasks that I thought would help our team the best and do things without having to be told what to do. I think this is a very valuable skill to have as your boss should not have to watch over your every move or tell you what to do all the time. They should be able to give you a task and you go above and beyond what they expect.
5 ) The three most important pieces of advice I would give to next year group is to read through previous year’s reports and PowerPoints to gain a better understanding of what they did to accomplish their goals and see that things change throughout the semester and that’s ok. Next, I would say get to know your team. This seems like an obvious one, but I feel like it took us until the trip to get very comfortable with one another and once we did I think our work just got better as a whole. We were able to be more direct with one another and just more comfortable with communication and better communication leads to better results. The last piece of advice I would give is to divide and conquer the work, but at the same time offer support and have an understanding of what is going on with everyone else as you all need to be on the same page and the work will just go smoother with everyone knowing what everyone is doing. This also avoids redundancy problems and makes the work sound better and more professional.
6 ) The only additional thought I have is just wanting to say thank you to the teachers for setting this up for us and giving this opportunity to us. I am very happy I took this class, and it was such a great experience, so thank you so much!