I've screwed up - big time. And I am sorely regretting my actions not to mention my attitude.
A fortnight ago, my lecturers put us into groups of five to work on our intervention plans for one case study. Each group had to produce only one intervention plan.
In the first week, everyone was putting all of their effort into our physiology/dysfunction exam which was comming up. Now my way of relaxing is reading, so in my spare moments I read through and made notes on all the suggested article readings. It wasnt boring at all - in fact really interesting and I saw the case in a new light (I previously thought it looked too hard).
The following week, the group all got together to discuss the short term and long term goal we would make and some ideas for the intervention plan. There was only three of us there I think. I statrted getting really frustrated with some because I had all these ideas as well as all the rationale to support the ideas but no one took them because they didnt understand how they were relevant. I asked them if they read the suggested readings and no they hadnt (at that time). This really annoyed me as I really wanted to get on with it and plan as soon as possible.
At this stage, I made the mistake of thinking only my knowledge and understanding was superior - BIG MISTAKE. To this day I still think my ideas were really decent, I just didnt include the ideas of the others. Sure they were initially behind me in the reading department, but what I didnt realise was that they caught up and all understood the synthesis between the model and the plan a lot better than I did.
One thing that still annoys me though is that all of our communication was shit. We all agreed before the weekend that we would work on our sections of the intervention plan. My bit was getting more rationale quotes. We would then forward these improvements via email and have the end product ready for Monday morning to be handed in. My internet crashed on the weekend so I didnt get mine done til Sunday evening which worried me a bit cos I thought everyone would think I ditched them. I got my emails working and found that no one emailed me anything. The plan was due in the next morning at 9am and I was really worried and slightly angry at the possibility that the others had left me to do the entire writeup. One key mistake I did here was sent out an emergency email (around midnight) asking everyone to meet me at the pc suite first thing in the morning to sort the paperwork out. Of course no one read their emails that morning and didnt come in til 9am. So with one other member, I wrote out the whole intervention plan from memory of what I thought we had agreed on the previous week. I did the whole thing and boy was I pissed off when I got to class.
The others didnt finish their plan til later Monday afternoon. About 6 hours after the due date, I wasnt involved at all (mainly cos I was so pissed off). I didnt realise at the time that the other members were just as pissed off at me for handing a separate one in.
The next day after I had calmed down and learned that everyone was pissed off I apologised to the group and tried to explain why I had done what I did without accusing anyone. We managed to ask to lecturer to get mine back to check if they were similar. Because we werent technically allowed to change the plan I had handed in, another member and myself quickly perused the two and realised they werent too different and that mine would be kept but would have some things added to it. I thought my plan still went along pretty well with theirs so I kept the majority of it in. No one knew this as we were under a really stressful time constraints not to mention a suspicious glare fro the teacher, therefore we didnt have time to bring the whole team together to go over it.
Today we all sat together and talked over the plan. I found out that their ideas were more specific than mine but didnt flow with the plan I had handed in. Boy did I have to do some minor grovelling. We sorted out what we were going to say tomorrow at the viva but we all decided that I would be left up to explaining the screw up in the last section of the treatment plan.
I know, that the majority of the fault here is mine. I accept that mistake and take responsibility for it. But I feel like some of this was screwed up because
- I did earlier readings. And no one understood my explanations from this research.
- The whole weekend thing was a fiasco - part of that was out of my power and I do not think I should be persecuted for taking action against the disorganization of other members.
- Not everyone turned up to meetings/tutorials.
I know I know... Not good future OT material but I working on it. For some reason (and please take my word for this) I am way better at this sort of thing in placements. I like hierarchies, and I like working with older professionals who I know will listen to me early on in the process and will take on board my suggestions.
At polytech a lot of the time I feel very verbally incompetent. Dont get me wrong I am a confident speaker, its just others not understanding what I'm talking about. This sometimes happens in my personal life as well but never on placement. Why the hell cant I be understood like this all the time??!!
Now I'm off to study for that viva tomorrow - so help me God.
Adios
Melody
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