What? So What? Now What?

What?
At the service event, I observed a lot of people getting to know each other, meeting for the first time, and coming together to do service for the kids at Mott's. The people I met were from all over the country and all over the globe. It was really exciting to see all the different people coming together to achieve a similar. Our research is from many different disciplines, but this activity brought us together to learn from each other and grow off each other's strengths.
So what?
I honestly thought we were going to be building more bikes and that team building was not going to be as large of a component of the day. I did, however, enjoy working with everyone to be able to build the one bike and learn a lot about everyone in the process. I would not consider myself a very mechanical person, but my perspective on the problem solving aspect of the bike was very useful in putting the bike together. From my group members, I learned about where they all came from and how to bring a group of very different people to come together to achieve a single goal. I like being able to work with others to perform all the tasks.
Now what?
From this experience, I plan to take what I learned about cooperation and teamwork and bring it into my lab. My lab requires a lot of communication from each member to complete a task. The service activity helped fine tune this skill. If I could change the group activities, I would make some more intellectually stimulating, such as solving puzzles and the like.