D-I-E Sami Hänninen

D-I-E

1. Describe

I think the most confusing situation during the exchange period was a situation with one group project, when we did not succeed to return a teamwork on time. We had a big project we were working together. We divided the project to parts and everyone had certain part of the project to do. Everything was okay until the deadline day came closer.

During the last night I got information from another team member, that we are not going to get the project done on time and he asked me to send an email to teacher. I did send email, but answer was strict. He said that deadline was deadline, and our group is not going to get any etc from the course. Christmas vacation was starting on the next day, and the reason why we did not finish the project never actually came out. That is still confusing me and it’s a shame, because I really would have needed the etcs.

2. 2. Interpret 

We really had lots of time to finish the group project, so we kind of made the problem with too tight schedule ourselves. We had problems starting teamwork in the beginning, so we postponed that week after week. I had used to be a team leader in the past, so this time I thought that let others lead and I’ll just do my part. I saw problems coming but I did not want to take bigger role, because I wanted to let others lead. 

We had also big cultural differences about how to proceed with the group project. It’s a bit challenging to try to understand each other when your common language is not so fluent with all members of the team. That might cause misunderstandings and so it did. Sometimes we agreed together that how to proceed and next time we met, we did not always understand what everyone had done. However, we finished first part of the group project but the second one we did not.

3.  3. EVALUATE: 

I think that we all saw problems coming but we all had lots of other things to do as well, so nobody was not eager to bring problems to the table. We had few meetings with the teacher about the projects during the semester, but even that did not save us from failing the course. I was very disappointed to myself after I found out that we are not going to finish the project. That course was one of the courses I had really focused at and after that failure, I really had not much to bring home from exchange period. After failing the course it was very challenging to continue studying normally. 

As a student, I could not imagine beforehand how much energy it would take to move to another country and study in different culture. I wish good luck to everyone who is going to an Erasmus student exchange program.