Week 1

Well, we’ve already done 1 week of galileo, and here’s my reflection.

What has been a standout moment for you?
That’s actually quite hard to answer, everything has been a stand-out for me. Probably because everything was new and exciting. But if I had to pick one, it would probably be our trail on friday. It was the first time we had the chance to work as a team- and I think we worked really well. We are all like minded people with different ideas, which means we work excellently well together yet we still have fresh and new ideas. On friday after Carly told us we could head off, we went straight to Federation Square. We didn’t have a close read of the sheet and we kind of made an assumption that that is where we needed to go. We were wrong. After re-reading the directions several times, and 20 or so minutes had past I was getting quite stressed out. We still hadn’t found our first destination. Angela, Seamus and Ellen were all pretty calm as if they knew we would find it soon. And they were right. We finally found our first place we needed to go. From that point on, we were all fast and efficient and we managed to work really well, we even had time to eat our lunch at the end 🙂

Has anything taken you by surprise?
I really had no idea what Galileo would be like. Of course, all of sharman heard repeatedly from past galileo students that it was a great time to meet new people and such. I think most of us didn’t believe them…at first. However now, I am so surprised how much closer I am with people I barely even spoken to in the past. For example, our Wednesday trail. Angela and I chose each other as partners, but we needed to have another couple from 9S2 to be with us. Dominic and Seng, both of whom I have never talked to, came straight to us and asked if we would like to work together. I was quite surprised. It was a little awkward at first, however at the end of the trail we were all comfortable being around each other and we all had a lot of fun. It was only day 3 and already have met 2 new people!

Has Galileo met your expectations thus far?
Galileo has definitely exceeded my expectations! I didn’t really know what to expect, at all. So I was a little frustrated and confused. However, now that it we are started the second week, I am definitely much more aware and I understand pretty much everything now. I really enjoyed the sessions where we develop our skills. For example, last week, we discussed if the key to success is delayed gratification and if intelligence and delayed gratification were the same. The marshmallows at the end were definitely a plus 😉 Also this week we talked about what is history is and how we define history. That really got me thinking. As well as today we talked about what makes a good question. That session was so helpful and I really think this will extend my learning. Anyways, I really hope we get more of these sessions in the future.

 

What are your initial thoughts about your team project topic and group?
I was really happy when I heard I got Psychology as my topic. I thought to myself as long as I got Psychology, I didn’t really care who would be my team members. However, I really, really like my group. As I said before, we are all the same type of people, however we’ve got all sorts of different and new ideas. Which I think is awesome.

Has your sense of the group changed as a result of completing the trail together?
Yeah, it has. In the beginning I thought we would all just be a bunch of shy people and we wouldn’t have good communication. However, during the first 20 minutes of the trail, I realized I was completely wrong. We worked so well together, we all contributed ideas yet we were patient and didn’t talk over each other. I am really glad that we were all put as a team and I am so excited to work on our first projects.

What did you notice in terms of: leadership, cooperation, time management and humour?
Well, in my opinion our time management has been going really well. For example, our trail last Wednesday and our newspaper tower yesterday, we do really well in terms of finishing at a certain time. Our cooperation has been good as well in all of our activities. And as for humour and being social, we all get a long great and we have a lot of fun.

What have you already learnt about yourself [working in a new group]?
For me, surprisingly I have learnt that I quite enjoy being the ‘leader’ of our group in activities. During the past, that hasn’t really happened to me. I wouldn’t normally like to have that role, mostly because if something would go wrong, I didn’t want to be the one in charge. However just during last week I think I have really come out of my shell and took on a bit of responsibility. And frankly, I’m quite happy about that 🙂