https://www.instagram.com/presenting_uncle_toms_cabin/?hl=en
Maia Coleman
December 14, 2018
Collaboration Reflection
For the most part I felt that Emily and I collaborated effectively. Initially I was slightly worried about whether we would be able to work well together. Emily and I each have different academic interests and different academic strengths so at first I worried that our partnership would not be productive. Contrary to my concerns however, we were a very effective team. Precisely because of our differing strengths and interests, we approached each topic, each idea and each detail of our project with distinct, but complementary viewpoints and as such, we were able to bring many various interpretations to our work. As a result of our differences, Emily and I were actually able to help one another with personal weak spots and blind spots and thus create a more complex and thoroughly thought out project. To give a more specific example, when choosing the topic for our project, we combined Emily’s interest in History and mine with Literature and found common ground in the discipline of Art History. This is how we selected our project idea. Additionally, when executing the project we were able to make one another more efficient. For example, Emily’s attention to detail was useful when we were organizing and uploading our photos to Instagram and my own big-picture outlook was useful when formulating our thesis for the exhibit and sticking with it. On the whole, we complimented one another nicely and together we were able to make better informed decisions, both big and small, for our project.
The only real issue I found when working with Emily was agreeing on times to work that suited both of our schedules. With the semester wrapping up and finals to complete we found it difficult to agree on times to meet when both of us were available and energized. There were a few instances of frustration for me in which Emily canceled meetings or in which I alone had to set the times for our meetings, but there were not many of these instances and they did not affect the quality of our project. In fact, though finding times to meet was challenging, I really enjoyed the way Emily and I worked together. At no point did we divide the work and execute it separately, instead, when we met, we took on each task together. I greatly enjoyed working side by side because it allowed me to bounce ideas off of Emily and to give her feedback as well throughout the process. The captions were the only part of the project completed individually and even these we wrote somewhat collaboratively, giving feedback and asking for suggestions as we went.
On the whole, I greatly enjoyed working with Emily. By the end of the process, both of us were pleased with our collaboration and satisfied with our final product.