005. Group work

I haven't been feeling well in the past days. So many contributing factors, really, but today was probably the worse. I felt like I was coming down with the flu and thank goodness the ibuprofen is doing it's job now in keeping the pain away. But in times like these, we have to trudge on.

Today marks the end of the first week of the MINE programme. So many things have happened since Monday when we all just first met each other, only sticking to our own friends because we didn't really know anyone. Half way through, I feel like I've integrated well with the group (admittedly, with some more than the others) and am starting to really enjoy myself even though we've now been given our workload.

And we have our work cut out for ourselves.

I am in group 1 and we have to discuss the differences in the preparation for nursing registration in each of the six countries. We're working with group 2 in tackling this and we've decided that we'll distribute the labour equally between the two groups and then we'll come together in the end to make one whole video.

Working in groups is hard. I've always thought that I do well in group works. Or, at the very least, I manage to work in groups. But this time is a bit more of a challenge. Maybe it's because of the language barrier that some suggestions and thoughts don't come across as well as we want to (this reminds me of our very first ice breaking game on the very first day; we have to arrange ourselves by our birthdays without uttering a single word). It can get frustrating at times because I know we're all trying and we get desperate to understand each other and help each other understand. I have a very good grasp of the English language so expressing myself is easy (comparatively) and I just realised that I sometimes take this for granted which is strange because I often find myself in situations where I have to speak a foreign language to get my point across (note: I sometimes need to speak in Maltese when speaking with patients). Needless to say, I've never been so thankful for Google Translate.

Besides the language barrier though, I think that we've worked well so far. We've allocated points to be tackled to each group and in my group, each member are doing research on their university's entry requirements, etc. for now.

As I've said, group work is hard but not impossible (obviously). I just need to have more patience - with myself and my groupmates - and be more encouraging of others. I realise that making people more comfortable in a group, where they feel they won't be made fun of or judged, will more likely make them speak up and be more participative.