Interpersonal Skills Seminar and Team Building - Reflection

Since we will have the Model A for this year’s field trip and seminars, which includes one major field trip which is to be held in Manila, one minor field trip within Mindanao, one national seminar and lastly, two hours of interpersonal skills. Last July 21, 2014, we had able to accomplished one of the important requirements for this field trip and seminars which was the interpersonal skills seminar and team building activities. And even though we exceed to time required of the interpersonal skills seminar, which we had able to spend 8 hours, still I can say that this seminar and activity is really worth it. As we had already discussed that we will be having the said event at exactly 8 am, so we were required to be at school before 8 am.  By the way, the said seminar was held at the USEP Social Hall.

       That day, I really did my best to wake up early to be able to come at school on time, even though I had a hard time of getting up because I was a little bit sick that time. But then luckily I was able to come at school on time and when I arrived at the social hall, it was 15 minutes before 8 am,  I noticed that they haven’t able to prepare yet for the decorations and even the chairs were not properly arranged. So when our facilitator asked for help to prepare the decorations, I hurriedly did my part so that we will able to start the seminar at the exact time we had planned to. After we had finished decorating and arranging the chairs, we officially started our seminar which was leaded by lecturer whom the director of the UGTO. The theme we had in our interpersonal skill seminar was the “Journey to Inner Space: Key to Effective Interpersonal Skills”. For me, it means exploring and discovering new things about ourselves to be able to deal with different personalities and having a great bond towards our classmates that we will be together with in our field trip. Before we started on our first activity, we were grouped into five by counting one to five, so with this kind of strategy there is definitely a chance that we will not be in the same group with our closest friends. And I think, with this, it would be an opportunity and might as well a big help for us to be able to interact with the others especially to those people whom we were not close friends. Because since we were from different programs, which is the day and evening program, so not all of us were already knew each other personally. After we had grouped and being gathered, we had started our first activity which was to jot down our expectations and contributions to this interpersonal skills seminar. So we directly shared our ideas and thoughts about our expectations and contributions. During our sharing, I was able to discover some things in each of my group mates, I was happy because they were all approachable and I find it comfortable to mingle with them. It is really important to interact and mingle with new individuals in order to know their personalities and even discover their different talents and capabilities. After gathering our ideas, we were said that there would be a representative of each group to share and discuss each on the front. During the sharing, I have learned and noticed that most of us had the same expectations and contributions for this seminar. To mention some of those, we had common expectations which is to have a deeper bonds, to have fun and to be able to know more better of our colleagues. In order to achieve these expectations, we should have to do or have a contribution in order to achieve those things. So as our contribution, we will have to cooperate in every activity, share our experiences, and even enjoying the every moment of the day.

The next activity we did is that, each of us was given a paper clip and were able to choose what color do we liked, in which we were tasked to shape the paper clips with the things that would best describes to ourselves. During that time, I really find it hard to choose a thing to be shaped that best describes myself and it really takes time until I had decided what to form on my paper clip. At first, I was hesitant to form a bird because I was thinking that it was really hard for just a little clip but then I just came to a point that a ‘v’ shaped would do. I chose the bird that best describes myself because I’m a kind of person who loves to travels a lot. I really want to discover and travel to different places wherever I want to. During the discussion within our group, each of us was able to share their personality, what they want to be and also their experiences. Through this activity, we were able to know and discover some of the things that best describes to ourselves aside from what we seen physically. I have learned that each of us has different characteristics and determination to achieve each of our goals in life. After discussing and sharing individually to our group, we then tasked by our facilitator to form the clips into an image that represents our group. Since the name of our group was “Travellers”, we gathered our formed paper clips and decided to form it into a bicycle since we were the travellers. By the way, we named our group travellers because during our sharing we noticed that some of us describes their selves as travellers and since we will be having our field trip at the Manila which we will travel a lot in there so we decided and all had been agreed to it. It was a fun activity that we were able to make some jokes to each other and I’m very glad that I was able to mingle with this kind of people. I can relate it to our FTS because since most of us were all first timers to visit Manila, I realized and concluded to myself that one of the purposes of this activity is to discover and learn something new. Discovering new things to ourselves was one of the goals of this said seminar, new things that will help us to determine our wants and goals in life and especially in dealing with the things that surrounds us.  It will be a big opportunity for us students to have our fieldtrip and seminars in Manila because this could be a chance for us to explore different companies as well as other places. Since the Manila has a lot better of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) companies as compared to local companies here in Davao, so I can merely say that we can get more learning and more ideas in the different aspects of their companies, on how they manage their different resources and different projects. Not just about the opportunity to get more learning and more ideas but also to visit and explore others places in Manila, as well as enjoy the places that we have never been before. And also, it would be a big break for us students to at least temporarily forget all the pressure and stress of being a student.

After then, we immediately proceed to our next activity, in which we were grouped again and we were tasked by our facilitator to draw on a sheet of paper the set of each of our family dining table. We will be able to present our different dining table set up with the arrangements of the family members when we were a child. We were also tasked to share and discussed all about the things we have drawn to our group mates. Since I am a part of a broken family, I had drawn broken lines in the center of our dining table. Honestly, I find it hard and emotional for me when it comes to sharing about my family. I always tend to ignore this kind of circumstances because I know I will become so emotional when it comes to this. While sharing about my personal dining table set up, I can’t help myself to cry and become emotional. But then upon the sharing went on, I am grateful because through this activity, it gives me much realization and understanding to the things. I just then realized that I should not keep my own problems just to myself, sharing my problems to others gives me a feeling satisfaction. It also made me realized that whatever the reason on what we are in our family or the set-up of our family right now, we had our own past and different ways on how to handle it whether it is good or bad. I am thankful that were people who would really made you realize and advice solutions to the things you have been suffering of and through this sharing I have learned a lot of things not just about myself but also about the different personalities of my group mates. We must not think of being down to ourselves because there were also a lot of people do share the same feelings as us. It will be then our determination and perseverance to do better and become a stronger person in order to deal with the trials and obstacles that we were experiencing in our own lives.

            There were a lot of things I have learned to these interpersonal skill seminars and definitely all these learning will be surely useful not just in our field trip in Manila but also in any situation we are dealing with. This interpersonal skill seminar is very important to us individuals when we will have our FTS because with this we will be able to fully understand each other without judging them first. It just made me realized and changes my perception that you cannot simply judge a person by just looking at them but you have to interact and communicate with them in order to know their real personalities. We must need to communicate and socialize with them in order to understand their feelings, knowing their strengths and weaknesses, and most especially in order to know their personalities for us to build deeper bonds with them. Since we will all be together in five days during our field trip and seminars in Manila, it is very important for us to have this interpersonal skills seminar so that we can bond and mingle to each other without hesitation since I am a kind of person who do not always make the first move in terms of communicating to persons whom were not my close friends. I had also learned that to have a self-confident will surely help in reaching out with other people. You have to take the first move in making new friends. We should not also limit ourselves to explore on things but then we must have to interact with them so that we may determine and discover the things that we really want. I am really glad to be able to attend this interpersonal skill seminars and team buildings because through the things that I have learned, it would help myself to become a better person, not just how to deal with others but also on understanding them without judging, and most especially, to be able to build a deeper bond towards others not just for the field trip but also making new friends with them. What matters to me the most in this field trip and seminars is that we will be able to achieve our goals for this trip, having good relationship to others and of course, to get what we really expected. Therefore I conclude that it is really important that we should practice to have good interpersonal skills towards others.