To Team or Not to Team

To Team or Not to Team  

    You either hate to work with other people or love to work with other people, everyone prefers one of the two more than the other, it can vary from multiple reasons such as personal standards like personality traits or personal benefits. Personally, I have chosen to work independently. I have many reasons as to why I prefer to work independently, that being said, it is possible and I must admit that I may be subject to require at least some sort of "interaction" with someone else at one point, at the very least to straighten up any curves and then go back to being fully independent. After all, I'm only human. 

 
    One of the major reasons as to why I am choosing to be independent over working with a group is the fact that I am simply more introverted, or more independent in general. I don't generally prefer having to rely on someone else to work on something, as I can get anxious more easily due to numerous factors (such as trying to meet up their expectations). As a person who is simply more independent, shy, introverted, or anything that can match up with these descriptions, working alone is simply more favorable and would also allow me to be more relaxed and calmed, it will probably help me out more with the future projects. 

 
    We have been previously assigned with two assignments, one involving the study of a social media account from a classmate, and another involving the lecture Lost at Sea. Both activities provided numerous ways to present students to the ways they can work independently, one allowing them to essentially study what could their peers be like, as I had to do with an Instagram account from a partner in class, which allowed us to get a better feeling to how we want to approach work with the person by analyzing their possible personality and answering the questions, in my case, this activity showed me that my peer in example seems to be probably an introverted peer too, and someone who is serious, which would probably make a synergy if we were to work together. 

 
    In addition to, the Lost at Sea activity also presented many things for collaboration, that being said, it does not mean it was necessarily good, in my case, I noticed that me and my partners agreed too easily on the things I or someone else decided on, which lead me to believe that with the wrong people, it may be easy for the people to be lazier, as there is less work on everything and everyone just agrees to everything, That being said, the people with whom I participated with where not class peers, so perhaps that was a role that affected this, but it does impact my views and does give me a reason to be more cautious and take the road with more work that requires me to be fully independent. 

 
    There have been some bibliographies made while studying a couple of articles, these being: Of rabbit holes and aquamarines (cabbages and kings). Which explain how social collaboration a necessary skill for us is essentially to develop and evolve better. Another being from Collective action: Collaboration, rebellion, creative dialogue: Surrealism as ideological defiance. Article that explains how things like love collaboration, and others are essentially an art, that have led to wonderful things, not only to the way we are, but also masterpieces such as Picaso's works. And of course, the most important one, being Team building and group dynamics: creating and fostering a culture of teamwork requires trust, collaboration, and accountability, which not only as the title implies and the article explains, there is a lot to teamwork that needs to be shaped. While all these articles bring many different points to the table, I still choose to stay independent, as there are also many counter arguments that support working alone as there are for working in groups. Group work requires a lot collaboration, and any lack of it from any of the members could consequently impact the overall work and effectiveness of the group, not to mention that even when there is cooperation, you are not necessarily going to get outstanding results, as there is still multiple extraneous variables that could be caused by team work, such as bias or lack of in-depth thinking, or lack of disagreement, and finally teamwork requires many things from both persons, some of which I will not get right away, as I am just simply more naturally introverted and I will not be used to trusting my team mate so early on. 

    For the time being I am going to stick to independent work as I find it less difficult to control and I feel like my personality just does not fit the environment I am put to when working in groups, not to mention I have extra limitations due to things such as a pandemic and online learning. Teamwork has many good things such as peer reviewing and better communication, but those are also skills I must learn better myself, because once I am required to actually implement these skills into a final test or something bigger, I will probably not be prepared. And lastly, working independently just makes me feel more confident overall, I prefer to feel confident while working on something vs feeling down or bad about what I am doing and potentially harm both me and my teammates.