Monsoon Musings is an event where aspiring writers, literature enthusiasts and anyone interested in language all gather to celebrate and share their pieces. I was a part of the organizing team for this event. 

LO1 : I was able to identify my strengths and weaknesses while preparing for this event. I have realized that I work well as a part of a team, however sometimes I struggle with being assertive and sharing my ideas with a larger group of people. There were different teams working in monsoon musings, and I was in the decor team, we had to coordinate with the editorial team; our supervisors and team leaders. I was able to overcome my weaknesses by sharing my ideas with everyone, even though some of them were scrapped, I learned not to take it personally and work on thinking of better ideas. 

Now that I am aware of my strengths and weaknesses, I will try to take up leadership roles as well so that I can learn to be more assertive and share my ideas with everyone. I believe I am a fairly open minded person therefore as a leader I would be able to respect and value every team member’s opinion. 

It is important that we recognize our strengths and weaknesses so that we can accept them and work on them as well. If I know what my strengths are, I can enhance them by taking up roles that give me the opportunity to work on them. By knowing what my weaknesses are, I can step out of my comfort zone and participate in activities that challenge me. 

I would like to work on my weaknesses and turn them into opportunities. Overcoming my fear of taking a strong position in a team instead of being a pushover, this would have benefitted me by giving me the courage to take up leadership roles as well

LO2 : The challenging part of monsoon musings was the lack of budget, we had to plan an entire event using the available or waste resources.  

This was challenging because we were planning to gift little memorabilias to all the participants. We also had to decorate our venue. We had problems with the venue as well as it kept changing. As a team we preferred an outdoor venue, but the teachers had first decided on using an indoor venue therefore we planned all the decorations according to that, later the teachers were able to get an outdoor venue. We had to alter our already prepared decorations to the new setting as we could not afford to make new decorations due to the zero budget. 

I have not done anything similar to this before i.e. working on no budget and still managing to put together a decent event.  

We overcame this challenge by reusing waste materials from previous events. We also thought of eco-friendly decor ideas that would not require a lot of resources. As a part of the team everyone participated by bringing resources from their homes as well such as brown paper bags and glass jars.  

I feel proud of our team to have managed to provide a successful event even with the challenges. I am glad that we didn’t give up, instead showcased resilience when problems related to budget, venue or resources arose. 

Life is all about having new experiences and learning something from them regardless of whether you fail or succeed. Therefore , I believe it is crucial for us to undertake new challenges so that we can grow and flourish as individuals. 

LO5 : Working with others is generally easy for me because I think I’m co-operative and open to other people’s ideas and opinions. Being a team player is very important but that does not mean to become a yes-man and agree with ideas that I might dislike, this was my main weakness because I avoided confronting my teammates about things that I did not like very much. 

Being a part of the monsoon musing’s team was easy because all the team members were my batch mates therefore I could communicate openly. 

Oftentimes, ideas that we were proud of or really liked were rejected by teachers and we had to not only let go of them but also come up with new ideas because we had no other option. Of course, the teachers had plausible reasons that we understood for rejecting the ideas, nevertheless it was difficult and we handled it through collaboratively working on brainstorming with the teachers as well. 

As we grow up, we’re going to be in several group settings, sometimes as a leader or sometimes as a team member. Regardless of our position it is important that we’re able to work collaboratively with the rest of our team. As a leader, I should be open-minded and respectful of everyone’s opinions. Sometimes I struggle with being stubborn, so learning to be flexible is significant for me. As a team member, I should always be ready to help and support my other team mates. While I did not have the leadership role, I observed how crucial it was to the planning of this event. With each organizing experience, I have come to realize that it is very important to have someone who manages the rest of the group for smooth functioning. Teamwork and synergy were also very important because we worked on everything together, from planning to decorations to the actual execution of the event.