learnings in the first week

The first week back at school was a mix of different influences and emotions running through it. First of all the fact that I had just come back from Tanzania so that my soul was still on its way while my body was already doing a check in. I was again reminded of the fact how different the challenges are in both countries, and how different the levels of communication and work moral. I like both, but I hate the transition when you see the gap so clearly. Time will heal these wounds.

Another recurrent thing this week was group discussions. We had to bring an end to last year's frustrations. Over the summer Christian, Maja and Morten had decided to quit and this too needed some attention from the team. Group talks are usually not my favorite thing. I get quite upset, either keep my mouth shut or talk with a lot of emotion and go home unsatisfied. I admire the people who manage to keep away from these frustrations and manage to see beyond what is being said and add things that change the perspective or bring back the focus. From the three group talks that we had, I felt that at least I managed to contribute some new insights in the topics that were discussed, and more than before did I see every body's role in the talk. I learned that it is possible for a group to facilitate itself when everyone has a high awareness of what is at stake and recognizes his or her role. I too learned about the importance of a dialogue rather than a debate or discussion, and how all parties are responsible to create that dialogue.

In any group talk, the challenge is to say the right thing at the right time. If you don't, you might find somebody else saying exactly the same thing and everybody agree but 20 minutes later. Part of this is not to deal with too many (sub) topics at once and not to introduce something new when the previous hasn't been concluded.
On Tuesday, during the training at the HvA, I learned how important it is to adapt to your clients, and meet them in their needs. We didn't do this enough and missed a chance to appeal to many candidates for our program.

Starting in Tanzania, and continuing in this week, I learned that transparency will take you further. There is no need from my point of view to hide things from team 2. Rather I hope to create a type of communication in our own team that can be overheard by everyone, and can be inspiring for everyone. I know our staff strives to do this too, and I have only recently learned how difficult this is in political situations. Still I strongly believe this to be the only way if you want everyone to take ownership over the problem and thereby invite them to contribute with their ideas and actions.

As a last point I was reminded of looking for the strenghts of the people around us at school and beyond school and learn from them what I need, instead of focusing on what they lack as a person. For me to remain my trust in the school I need an inspiring environment with lots of challenging people, lectures and projects going on that attract me to stay at school and not run off looking for something more fun.

Learning is everywhere!