Colllaborative Era

Group work is a theme I've seen often throughout my time at Berkeley. All classes now seem to have a group work component in which one's grade is heavily dependent on a collaborative work. It's very clear that collaboration is heavily needed for our future, as has always been the case for humanity, but it's only now that we're getting rid of the idea of single-handed genius. Modern American culture emphasizes the need for working together, perhaps in view of the threat of climate change and the "perfect storm" of crises headed our way, and this is reflected in how classes at Berkeley are. Grades are no longer based on your sole performance, but can only be reflected in the performance of others.

For instance, our grade this semester for our class on Vietnamese society is based on group work we've done collecting interviews and writing the transcriptions. The general problem here was that the work load was doomed to be asymmetrical, and to be done by mostly two out of the five members of the team due to the unequal language ability. The assignment was to collect and translate interviews of workers in Vietnam. Only two of the members could speak both Vietnamese and English well enough to do justice, both of whom were Vietnamese. There was one American who knew fluent Vietnamese, but only conversationally as she was never formally trained. That left two members who were nearly useless, having only editing work to contribute in English. The challenge for me personally, being one of the useless English speakers, was to contribute to the work without slowing down the other members. It was difficult because I felt my contributions in general were only slowing down the execution of project, although the arbitrary nature of the grading system made it so that "participation" was mandatory. And participate I did as much as I could.

I found in the end that if you cannot contribute to a group with work, the best thing to do is to act as a social lubricant. I don't mean you should bring alcohol to the meetings, but that you should try your best to get everyone on good terms. Icebreakers and such are always contrived and awkward, and it's the rare person who can seamlessly move from introductions to icebreaker without it seeming gimmicky, so the best thing to do is to make conversation and to offer little surprises that would make a meeting more pleasant to be at. The best way to do this, of course, is to bring good food. Another option is simply to have the meeting at a nice cafe, but this often creates a tension between prices and those who can afford it. The idea is to have everyone comfortable, and to have people enjoy the feeling of going to a meeting. The other way one can contribute, is simply to keep people to the agenda. To keep them focused, and to perhaps even offer a little comedic relief when needed, and to not over do it.

These are the important lessons I learned dealing with my group, and they're useful even when one has an important contribution to make.