I have developed my collaboration skills this semester by working with others in each of my classes. For example, in Physics, every Friday we have problem-based learning sessions where we work in small groups to solve complex problems. My weekly group members, Meera and Jane, and I ended up really bonding and working very well together, and we almost always finished with out problems efficiently and accurately. I’m sure that our ability to collaborate together made this possible–I certainly couldn’t have gotten through the problems without them!
In terms of leadership, I have acted as a leader in my Astrophysics class this semester. After finding our first homework assignment very challenging, and hearing similar laments from my classmates, I took the initiative to find the class roster on Moodle and send an email with a GroupMe link to everyone so that we could all have a group chat. This really facilitated our ability to work together (we would text each other with questions and coordinate times to meet up and work on the assignments together), which both made assignments a lot more manageable and allowed us all to learn more.
In terms of network building, I have always been really good at finding at least one contact in each of my classes to reach out to in case I want to work with them on homework, l have someone to study with, or even someone to just ask questions about class material in general. In fact, I met two of my best friends in my math class last from exactly this process (we exchanged numbers in a TA session and decided to study for the midterm together and have been hanging out ever since). This semester in particular, I made good friends with one student who is in three of my classes (linear algebra, astrophysics, AND computing for astronomy), and our friendship has been quite mutually beneficial for asking questions/sending notes if one of us misses class for all three of the classes.
In terms of professionalism, though it is sometimes hard to judge my personal work in proving myself reliable, my friend who was in a group dance with me told me that she remembers how, when I thought I was the weak link of the group and didn’t know the dance as well as everyone else, I practiced really hard in my own time and offered to practice a lot with other members of the group to ensure that I wouldn’t let the group down. Perhaps this could be a bit of a anxiety-related fault, but at least people can always count on my to put my 100% in.
