GLC2O-August 2016-28/29-Career

Studies-Laufer
Assignment 3

I believe some of my strongest skills lie in the area of independent work.

Often, when I take math classes outside of school and I don’t understand the
material, I go home and try to dissect the teacher’s lesson bit-by-bit on my own. If I
didn’t understand why the x-coordinate of the vertex of a quadratic was equal to –
b/2a, I would try several combinations of equations and numbers just to understand
how this formula was created. I always find out more when I work alone and try to
figure everything out myself.

The skill that I lack the most is collaboration. I have caught myself
disagreeing and showing bad attitude multiple times when I work in a group. I know
that collaboration is one of the most important skills to possess in the work place
because a group of people can be more productive than just one person working on
their project. If a person does not possess strong collaborative skills, they may be a
liability to their team which leads to less productiveness.

The steps I will take to improve my collaboration skills are to simply work on
more group projects. The more I work in a team environment, the more I learn how
to effectively communicate and be productive with my team. One of the things I have
learned when working in a group is that I should never verbally disagree with any
group member on anything. Instead of saying, “Oh that’s wrong we shouldn’t do
that!” I should instead say something like, “I think what you have in mind works
only in the right circumstances, let’s try what I have in mind and see if that works”. I
know I have a lot to learn in order to master how to work in a group setting,
however reflecting on my progress encourages me to find out more and continue
working with others.