Tuckman Model
This week in class we read about Tuckman's Stages of Group Development. These phases are essential for any group to grow and succeed and I have had some great experiences with group dynamics at Ohio State! My involvement with the First Year Connections team through the Undergraduate Admissions and First Year Experience has been a wonderful time, with some challenges in the mix.
Forming: Hey Y'all! This is when the group first gets together and meets each other. This stage is important because the team is organized and routines are established. All of us on FYCT met at the end of our first year at OSU, during Spring Quarter (2011). We played some ice breakers and planned for the upcoming year. I think it's funny looking back on first impressions, because they are so important. I remember meeting a fellow FYCT member who lived on my floor, Bri. We never talked while in Haverfield, but I recognized her and she seemed awesome.
Storming: Grrr... We reconvened the day before school started this year (2011-2012). We discussed our summers and did more ice breakers. Over the break, we had been given a hundred names of incoming first years to be a Buckeye Contact to. We were supposed to send them a few emails, introducing ourselves and offering our help if they had any questions before school started. This was the first time trying Buckeye Contacts and it didn't work super well. We discussed what happened over the summer and what went wrong. Very few students responded to our emails and some students never received them. There also wasn't a very strong support network for answering their questions if we didn't know the answer. This stage was definitely storming because come ideas were competing against others. We were faced with our first issue and we had to solve it. It was good to hear everyone's opinions, but challenging to create a solution. To make matters a little more difficult, our advisor left for another job. We were feeling lost and classes hadn't even started yet.
Norming: What are we doing here?? After resolving the Buckeye Contact endeavor, we moved on to bigger and better events. We were working on the Buckeye Book Community, planning mixers for Buckeyes Beyond Ohio, and attending FYE events. All those fun and informational sessions you went to for your survey class :) Our main goal was established: help first years in any way possible become more connected to Ohio State, through involvement, academics, and friendship. Each of us had to attend and facilitate events and we were responsible for making sure everything went according to plan. It felt good to be productive and because we were held accountable, we did big things. We were also all becoming closer friends and I was looking forward to our Friday afternoon meetings. This definitely helped our team focus on what we wanted to accomplish by the end of Fall quarter. It also is nice that Bri, who I mentioned in Forming, as become one of my best friends and will be one of my roommates next year!
Performing: now we're on a roll! Winter quarter so far has been a blast. We have taken True Colors and learned more about each other's personalities and how best to work together. I'm a hardcore blue: enthusiastic, compassionate, idealistic, and imaginative. We did some Professional Development workshops as well, since most of the FYE events were at the beginning of the year. Now that we're able to make decisions and handle conflict on our own, we have been divided into small groups to create an event on our own that deals with an issue we believe is relevant to First Years. Mine is Current Issues. So to have a fun and relaxing event, we're throwing a March Madness Viewing Party once we get back from Spring break. It's nice to be given more responsibilities and actually plan an event on our own!
Adjourning: So long, farewell! The FYCT 2011-2012 will disintegrate at the end of this year. I'm so sad for it to end, but Spring quarter we will find a new class of energetic, fun, and involved first-years to help with the class of 2015. Though we haven't come to our last stage of recognition and celebration, I look forward to spending the rest of this year with my team :)
P.S. Happy Valentine's Day!
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart."
- Helen Keller
Norming: What are we doing here?? After resolving the Buckeye Contact endeavor, we moved on to bigger and better events. We were working on the Buckeye Book Community, planning mixers for Buckeyes Beyond Ohio, and attending FYE events. All those fun and informational sessions you went to for your survey class :) Our main goal was established: help first years in any way possible become more connected to Ohio State, through involvement, academics, and friendship. Each of us had to attend and facilitate events and we were responsible for making sure everything went according to plan. It felt good to be productive and because we were held accountable, we did big things. We were also all becoming closer friends and I was looking forward to our Friday afternoon meetings. This definitely helped our team focus on what we wanted to accomplish by the end of Fall quarter. It also is nice that Bri, who I mentioned in Forming, as become one of my best friends and will be one of my roommates next year!
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