X-Culture: Reflections

Guest Blogger: Motunrayo Hambolu

I was assigned to group 10 and my teammates varied from India, Thailand, Mexico, and two students from the United States; one from Florida International University and the other from Eastern Washington University. At first I remember thinking that the project will be easy! I was excited to start the project because I love getting to know people and testing my abilities especially when it comes to meeting deadlines and being understanding of people from different backgrounds. I met my teammates and got to know more about them, and realized that even though we come from different places we still had some similarities when it came to likes, favorite TV shows, and hobbies. We were assigned a mentor from Eastern Washington University, and her goal for the project was to make sure we were on track, she was not allowed to participate in the project in terms of researching our group work or taking part in writing our final report. She was effective and advised when she was supposed to.

At first the project was going okay especially when it came to getting to know each other, and just bringing in ideas about the project; what our products would be and the location. Everyone participated accordingly and gave inputs plus we had our mentor check up on us and ensure that we were on the right path. Somewhere during the project, as things became more serious and we had to research on our location and know more about Cambodia, the group was not as active as it should have been. I believe the reason for this was that our group members became busy with other things and therefore did not have as much time for the product as they did before. At some point, one of our group members, who was from Thailand, became inactive; he stopped discussing with us and contributing. We emailed him asking what the problem was and why he stopped participating, he emailed back after three days stating that he was very busy and was actually on a study abroad. To be honest, we were all upset about this because it was unfair to all of us and that meant we had to add extra work to every other persons work since that meant he’ll be unavailable most of the time. At the end of the day, we found a way to make it work. We divided the sections of the report and all went to research on it. I ensured that our work was submitted on time and everyone had their parts done.

If I was given the opportunity of doing this research again I will not mind doing it with my group members again, they were all very helpful and even though most of us were busy with school work we still found a way to dedicate time to the project. I also loved the fact that most of us were internationals and/or had international experience that we did not mind sharing.  The only thing I will change concerning this project will be to ensure that all the professors from the different schools weighed the project equally that way each student feels the same amount of pressure and I believe will dedicate the same amount of time needed for the project.