With the semester coming to an end and our project work being wrapped up, I’ve had the chance to reflect on my Global Service-Learning experience. There are four key lessons I took away from this project revolved around communication, teamwork, balance, and engagement.
Communication
Throughout the semester, I significantly developed my ability to communicate authentically, professionally, and efficiently both within my own team and with the client. I practiced speaking my mind within my team, even when it was uncomfortable, with the intention of most efficiently reaching our end goals. The reading “Conflict Management in Teams” by Kristin Behfar and Rebecca Goldberg, which we just went over in class, provided helpful insight on the balance of satisfaction and productivity in group settings and confirmed for me that honesty is incredibly valuable when trying to reach a goal as a team. I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting to learn about honesty and authenticity from a business-centered class, but I’m grateful I did. As for practicing a professional tone, feedback on assignments helped me identify certain writing habits that can be formalized for professional settings.
Teamwork & Navigating a Business Environment
In the first two weeks of the project, I was worried about what I could contribute without a business background. However, once I focused on my skills instead of abilities, I became more confident in my role (i.e. providing input on areas I’m experienced in and letting others do the same). The reading “Ethics in Project Management” by Craig Brown identified sustainability as a key ethical principle of business and helped me understand how my background would align with the project goals. I also learned that not being the most knowledgeable person in the group is a great opportunity to listen and learn about new things.
Balance
There was a great deal to learn about balancing academic and personal experiences throughout this project. In-country, it was a balance between having fun and enjoying the experience while also making sure we get our work done. Transitioning from the in-country experience into finalizing deliverables wasn’t tough in the moment, but looking back I can see that productivity definitely lulled on my end.
I also found that I was leaning too much into the reflection of my own personal development from this project and wasn’t balancing it with academic and professional development. Without reflection on the latter two I wouldn’t have uncovered the insight I have now on communicating in professional settings and the ability to identify my role in a team.
Engagement
Compared to other travel or study abroad programs I’ve done, my level of engagement within this experience was exponentially higher. Both personally and professionally I’ve grown more from this course and project than I have all of my other travel/study experiences combined. I have no doubt this is due to the intentions that each reflection set as well as the combination of in class discussions and readings.
Something that specifically helped my ability to remain engaged was referencing the DEAL model, especially now as I’m examining the personal, academic, and civic aspects of my experience. I have to say, providing thoughtful reflection is more challenging than I initially expected, so being able to reference this model has been helpful.
Final Takeaways
My initial blog postings were surprisingly accurate in terms of what to expect, but as I had mentioned, lacked meaningful tie-ins to professional and academic development. I was right on with intention of staying grounded and correctly anticipated the idea of “fair-trade learning” being at the core of our experience. I also became more comfortable in both client and project-based work, and I even narrowed down my career interests, but I hadn’t realized how relevant this project would be to my future career.
Now, even though I don’t know exactly what field this experience will benefit me in, I can still identify the transferable skills I developed that will serve me in any career. Specifically, communication, critical thinking, interpersonal, and writing skills have all developed. Writing professionally especially has developed both in practice and with the feedback I’ve received from peers and professors. Though I don’t see myself working in a business focused field, it’s undeniable that there are business aspects to any job and I’m confident the experience and knowledge I gained during this project will come in use for whatever I decide to do.
In a professional interview I would pitch this as a project-based learning experience where I contributed environmental expertise in a team of students to create marketing content (e.g. flyers, fact sheets, promotional video) for Caras con Causa, a Puerto Rican non-profit based in environmental and educational programs. I would explain that I immersed myself in the project’s mission during a week-long in-country learning experience with the client to better understand the scope of our work.
Pitt’s existing relationship with Caras made it easy to hit the ground running. Communication lines and trust was already established and the expectations on our team from Caras were clear from the beginning. This helped us identify our deliverables early on and having past group’s work to reference made it easy to stay on track as well as understand what was expected of us. Overall, Pitt having an existing relationship with the in-country client as well as previous project materials available to us took a lot of pressure off our team and provided us with the wiggle room for this to fully be a learning experience.
The three most important things I think future groups need to know are:
- Don’t expect perfection and be ready to have confidence in your strengths/weaknesses (embracing them will only help the team!).
- Get a head start on understanding what you want/need to do (yes, Teams can be difficult to navigate but get in there and read about past projects), but don’t feel the need to plan everything out – plans will change.
- Move the discovery along: Take initiative, remedy situations as they arise, and hold yourself accountable!
Reflecting on the first reading we did, “What is Experiential Education?” by the Association for Experiential Education, I can see that there are a few areas of engagement I fell short on throughout the experience. But, knowing this, I can set the intentions for how I want to focus on strengthening those areas in my next travel or learning experience! Though it’s been a challenge, I can’t say enough about the how amazing and illuminating this project was!!