Challenge Overcome

In the first semester at APU, I had 6 courses. I passed the “Workshop I,” the three “Foundation Japanese,” and the “Introduction to Management” courses quite easily, since all I had to do was to listen carefully to the teacher, do my homework, prepare for next classes, and participate in class actively – all of which I have got used to since I was little. However, the “Workshop II” course required group work, which was quite challenging for me.

Workshop II divided the class into small groups to give group assignments and activities; therefore, group meeting was compulsory, which was not an easy task for my six-member group. In the first class, my group decided to make a group timetable, where each member filled in the time of the week he/she was busy. I still can recall how confused our faces look like when we saw our timetable schedule: it was fully filled with our classes and activities. The only free time for all of us was at night, but we all had to go home by then. We eventually decided to have online meetings instead. Social online contacts were gathered: Line, Facebook, Skype, etc. and we discussed everything online. For three months, thousands of messages were sent and hundreds of calls were made, all of which were from 9p.m to 2a.m. In the end, throughout the course, we never had a face-to-face meeting, but our group interaction was still graded as one of the best in class.

The reason why our group can still create harmony even without direct meeting is because of the respect we have for each other. At that time, our teacher assistant suggested us another choice other than online meeting: each of us can reduce our extracurricular activities after class so that we can meet each other. For me, studying comes first, so I agreed with this plan, but some members of the group did not. One of the group members was joining the Yoshakoi dance club every day, and he refused to take a day off from the Yoshakoi weekly practice. Another was helping the Chinese...