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The first thing I learnt from group is understanding and warm friendship. We should be friends before being teammates! Back to the beginning of this course, due to my 3 month internship in Taiwan, I was the last person showing up in the class that means I missed the whole week of orientation, the first week of class mapping the city, even with my buddy- Kristine, I had just a little contact through email because my working condition in Taiwan did not allow me to access internet frequently. Hence, frankly, I felt worried joining in group at the beginning ;). The first class only focused on group's work of mapping the city, which I didn't involve in, made me feel like outsider. However, I'm such a lucky person because all members in my group are very friendly and sympathizing, they helped to explain to me what was going on , why and how they did the group work so far.
I still remember my first day in class, while everyone was discussing on the print version of the city-map made by 4 other members in my group with the name of Thu, Jesse, Kristine, Mary on top of the paper, Kristine quietly added my name "Chi" in that line. I have never talked to Kristine about that and I think she may simply considers it as a small action but it really meant a lot to me. :)
Being friends before teammates- that's the first thing I learnt from Chim Sao. The first day of mine in class was unforgeable !
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The second thing I learnt from my group is the balance between individual tasks and common tasks. Honestly, comparing with other groups in Kiem An project, my group seems to be less dynamic because we don't have time to meet up, interact and do all works together, which personally I think would be more fun. Also, we somehow slowly react to the deadlines :) making our group work less exciting, sometime just purely following the due dates although Kristine does very good job motivating people, reminding and dividing tasks for the whole group. So, because the common tasks in my group are normally slow, we decided to increase the individual tasks, which means that one or two members work on 1 interview (both interviewing, transferring to GiG version and translating); the person who doesn't interview or translate will be in charge of editing. I think that method makes work done well because despite the lack of interaction or team building among members, we still complete work on time and smoothly. Therefore, I come up with the idea that in some cases when your group isn't good at interacting or gathering doing common tasks, improving individual tasks first and then asking others to help finish is also a good way to make work done.
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In my group, thanks to my Vietnamese speaking skill :)), which I should be proud of, I'm normally in charge of interviewing people, creating raw transcript and together with Kristine to translate. I also help Jesse or Mary translate if the interview is originally in English. Well, from the beginning of the course, I really wanted to interview people with UC friends or at least, me and 1 more folk going out to interview people, which would be so much fun. Also, by that way, we will avoid mistakes or misunderstandings during translating section because we both involve in talking to people and understand the original transcript right away. However, the reality kept me away from my initial plan. For example, the man who does spiritual work- fortune teller didn't want to be interviewed by many people and kind of worrying strangers; The chance to interview Dong Nat lady and Ao Dai designer was unexpectedly come to me, there was no time to call other groupmates or wait for them to involve in the interview. That's why I interviewed 3 people by myself. Although all of these interviews are interesting and quite successful, I somehow felt guilty to take the chance of talking and directly involving in the reality of other members, especially UC friends. I remember talking about that to Thay Gerard and Thay said it was ok to do that because it's difficult to gather everyone and every tasks of the project (interview, translate, edit) is important equally. Furthermore, I also receive full of understanding and encouraging from my teammates, making it easier to keep on working hard. Otherwise, if I had chance to do more interview with my group or ability to change back in time, I would find more opportunities to go interviewing and interacting with others as well as take more pictures, tape and record the interviews better.
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So, for the last words,
Thank you so much, Thu, Jesse, Kristine and Mary for your kind support, sympathy, hard-working and warm friendship :)
Go Chim Sao !!!
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