On the day we practiced about fishbowl activity as an observer and participant, I had a chance to learn that perspective-taking can boost my cognitive flexibility and impact my sense of belonging.
When I was an observer, I noticed more how each of the team members listened, reacted and supported each other about the ideas. Sometimes, the idea came really close to the new pivot – like the piano with the pressure sensor or so far away like the adjusting light with distance sensor. I realized just by having their teammates listen and support their ideas made them more comfortable to suggest new idea, even sometimes was to throw away their established plan. There was a clear difference with teams with good care and provider of sense of belonging and teams that do not. Moreover, just by being silent and taking a step back, listen to other people brought so many new ideas for me and so many lessons for how to support my teammates.
This is also the first time I learned about CPX but thanks to taking small steps, my background of coding and the encouragement from professor, my friends and TA made it so much easier and more belonged. Brainstorming with my teammates make me realize that to grow well as a group meaning make sure everyone feel good, validated and comfortable with the ideas that we are going after. My teammate and I had different coding background. This seemed to be her first Computer Science course and this is my last semester as a Computer Science major. While I felt comfortable and excited with the idea of using the pivot, she felt a bit nervous that we could not finish those ideas on time. So, we tried to actively listen to each other’s ideas, support those that seemed comfortable for both of us, settled down ample time to make both feel realistic and doable. And most important, there were multiple times we threw away ideas that no longer served us. We had ideas together, wrote codes together, design together while kept on checking and reflecting. Thanks to that, when we actually executed the project, we moved really quickly and felt both validated and connected after the project.
However, there are many times things do not go great as planned, for example my thesis right now. I planned my thesis since the early of March this year about predicting force information for surgical robotics. Then, I went to a conference in June to see that a representative from Intuitive Surgical announcing they already had force feedback implemented in newest version of commercial surgical robot.
And the lab I visited in Nashville also did the pretty the same method that I used to solve that problem was so far ahead of us. I felt like I was just like playing catch up but it took so long for me to let it go. I decided to continue working on side project and took a step away from it for a while. I realized that this thesis topic did not suit my current skills, not what I was most interested about and not fit to any lab that I wanted to do in graduate schools.
Three days ago, I finally gained enough to talk to my Principal Investigator to change my thesis completely. With the new idea, I felt so much more fit and interesting to pursue. This was only given by taking time to stop helped me to look at it from a different view. Even though I had four more months to complete it and was supposed to submit the background, introduction and method earlier this month, I felt so much more relieved. When I talked with my professor, she gave me her insights and endless support, validation for my thought process. She brainstormed with me and supported my new idea. She made me feel like I belonged to the lab and the field. To be honest, I am not sure if I can make it on time or not but thanks to this belongingness and perspective-taking, I can continue moving forward.