Adjourning, sweet
and sad
Oh wow, this week’s
assignment has caused me to reflect on different aspect of past times good and
bad. I have reflected as far back as high school in looking at groups that I
have been involved in over my adult life. I did not even remember how emotional
some of these connections were, and how they have affected my life and impacted
who I am today. Looking back at my group experiences, I believe that when the
people in the group are focused on the common purpose, it makes for a harder adjournment.
Sometimes it is not about the success of the group but the journey that was
experienced, the connections, the challenges that we faced together and of
course the outcome that most times results from the efforts of everyone.
I have been in
many groups and have made many connections and formed different relationships,
but it was my first year group in college, that was the hardest to leave. Going
to teachers’ college was my first real experience of making connections with
total strangers, people I never met before. (Stage1 Forming). It was amazing
that we were almost all in the same position, new to everybody and new to
everything. We had to get out of our shells and get to know each other, be bold
and put ourselves “out there”. We realized that we had to connect and find our niche.
(Stage 2.Storming). We became roommates, classmates, teammates and other kinds
of group members, we began to work in formal and informal groups, making
friendships. (Stage 3. Norming). We had to do the preliminary program to
qualify for our areas of specialization. It was a rigorous and intense year in
which we experienced all kinds of emotions and challenges together in our different
focus groups. One of our teammates had a mental breakdown and had to go home,
we were anxious and devastated. We had gotten to know each other well, we developed
trust, respect and understanding of who each one of us were. (Stage 4.
Performing). By the time we got to finals, we were not only students with
common goals now, we had gone through many journeys, many triumphs, many
trials, many struggles and many victories. Now the end of this phase was coming
to a close, we would leave not knowing who was going to make it back. Each
student left as soon as their finals were over so we did not have a closing ritual,
we just cried each time one was leaving. It was an emotionally charged period
and it was hopeful and sad. (Stage 5 Adjourning).This was the perfect
experience of going through the five steps of team building, (Abudi, G., 2010). even
though I was not aware of the name of this process I can identify with each
step.
Even though we
have not met face to face as colleagues, we have been journeying together in
this program for over a year now. Some of us have been in every class together
up to this point, and I now realize that we will be saying goodbye in a couple
weeks, according to our specializations! I am going to miss those classmates
because we have establish a bond, friendships even and I hope that we can stay
in touch after this program ends, even for a while. Adjourning is crucial,
necessary and needed to provide closure to this journey that we have been on
together because we connected in ways that we do not even realize. We had a
common vision and common goals in which we committed to working together,
whatever it took and we acknowledged and respected each other as we journeyed
for success. Now as we near the end, we are reflecting on the past year and I
am thinking that it would be good for us to keep in touch. We may have
connected for more reasons than this, and will probably be in a group of some
kind in the future.
Reference
