Bilal's March
Week 3 Reflection
Please share how you feel about the onboarding process. What are some resources that were helpful, and what’s something you’d like to see implemented in the future?
The Onboarding process was relatively smooth and not very difficult. There were a variety of tasks that were given which seemed like a lot at first. However, I learned more about the importance of communication. Because of Slack, I can maintain direct communication with my coworkers and supervisors. This helped me a long in the first couple of weeks as it allowed me to resolve my conflicts and ask questions when I was unsure of anything. I will say in the beginning of my placement, I was more skeptical when it came to communicating with other high school co-op students, as I barely knew any of them. The online environment meant I would not interact with them as often. I hope in the future, there is perhaps some inclusion of a direct introduction through a meeting or something of the sort.
Describe one main task you worked on this week. Who did you work with? How did you approach the task? What did you accomplish?
This week, I worked on the “Carole Web inventory spreadsheet”. This assignment was long but relatively simple, the spreadsheet had a list of a number of web pages of U+ Education and their partners, and we were given the task to suggest edits and changes to enhance the quality of the website experiences. This task had a variety of teams working on it, my team consisted of the Web development assistants, such as Louis, Kathir and Om. Together we made suggestions to several pages on U+ Toastmasters, U+ careers, the main U+ Education website, and soon we will also do the same for YRES and TRES. For the most part we have worked independently, however we agreed on planning a meeting in order to check how everyone is doing.
What is one big challenge you faced this week? Who did you turn to when you needed support? Describe what you learned and what you would do differently the next time.
One big challenge I faced this week would be communication. During the beginning weeks I only ever communicated with my managers, and I found it daunting to talk to other high school co-op students. This week was the first week where I was put into a smaller team of students in order to achieve some more specific tasks, which would mean I would need to communicate more with my team. Furthermore I was also given the role of team lead, meaning I was responsible for making sure everything was going smoothly. This current assignment is still ongoing, but I managed to coordinate a meeting with my team to discuss our assignment. It was a bit strange because it was the first time directly talking to my teammates, especially without a supervisor, but for our first time it went well. I think that more communication with my group as we continue our co-op journey will allow us to grow more comfortable with each other and enhance our communication.
What personal motto or guiding principle would you bring with you to your role next week, and how do you see it helping you contribute to our organization’s mission?
I think one Motto that I will use next week is ” communication is key”. Communication is very important to the online work environment because without communication we have no clue what others are doing, and what’s expected of us. I have been getting better at communicating with my team, and I want to continue to increase my communication skills and coordination with my team in order to complete more challenging tasks.
