As one of the original creators of this site, it is required that I share one experience in which I had to use the strategies from the conceptual model to focus on my progress toward a specific goal. Therefore, I would like to share with you all about my past experience traveling overseas and how my contributions to the plan were applied in the situation.
Ever since I can remember, learning languages has always been a fun hobby of mine. But of course, learning a language would not be necessary if you never planned on improving or using it to communicate and I believed that improvement would only happen through surrounding myself with the people of the language. This would also give me the chance to test my ability in comprehension. That was why I decided, that in the summer of 2017, I would guide my family through a two week vacation to South Korea.
So of course the first thing I did was study the language because that was my job and my responsibility. I was the communicator for my family because they knew how much I admired the language and culture. I was also very dedicated and determined to learning the Korean language that my hobby slowly became a motivation, because I knew that it would serve me well when traveling around Seoul. Since my responsibility for this trip was to learn the language, as I was doing, others took the responsibility of the finding transportation routes, locations to visit, etc.
With that being said, breaking down the language barrier between us and the Koreans definitely helped my family and I find our way around Seoul, South Korea. However, prior to the trip, we had to focus on organizing our plans, which consisted of an itinerary and a map of locations to visit. We planned our day to day activities and catered our locations according to what each person would like to see. The itinerary not only kept us moving along with time, but also allowed us to visit as many places as possible while learning more about the Korean culture.
Because we had a big a party and would only be staying for 2 weeks, we did not visit every place that we had hoped to see. However, the trip was still worth discovering a whole new side of the world that we have never seen before.
Besides making an effort to improve on my communication and organizational skills, commitment was something that I focused on a lot during this time. It played a very important role in this trip, especially when I was learning the Korean language. But of course that was not the only time when I felt determined to get something done.
As many should know, a passport is a major “must have” when traveling out of the states and for someone who has never done that, I needed a passport and I needed one quick. Luckily, after filling out my application and getting my picture taken, it only took about two weeks for my passport to mailed in. After that, the only thing left to do was prepare ourselves for the day that we would board the plane.
During our family vacation, there were definitely some moments during the trip that were stressful and frustrating. For example, not sticking to the schedule, which led to some disagreements and angry family members, including me. At this time, everyone was either sick, struggling from the heat, or bored of the scenery, but something we all had in common was that we were taking our personal struggles and using it to express ourselves in an angrily manner.
This is definitely something that I feel like everyone in the world does because at one point in our lives, we don’t want to tell the truth about how we feel simply because it might show people that we are vulnerable. But, as we learned in previous lecture material, being vulnerable could actually be a good thing.
Overall my experience was great and as I continue to learn Korean until this day, I have already made many more plans for the future, one of which is shortly approaching. Although this next trip may not require as much as it did for Korea, I still like to believe that organization, commitment, and communication are very important factors they contribute to even the smallest things that we do in our daily lives, like thinking.
Successful teams 