Reflection #5

My on-site work for this semester included archival research and attenting a city council meeting for our project being presented.  Through my experiences, I have realized how difficult it can be to collaborate with others. For example, I worked a lot with our community partner, and she made it feel as though we were contributing something important to the project the whole time. When I was doing my archival work, she said it would be useful for her in understanding the contexts behind East St. Louis’s history of environmental efforts. Additionally, we were told to make posters for our city council public meeting. We were asked to do this because the public would be there, and we were told they may be upset at us talking about planting trees due to their consistent water issues. She thought we should create the posters to inform them how creating a tree canopy there would help their water and air quality. I thought this was a good idea since we could not do any of the other events we planned from the beginning. But, when I showed up at the public meeting and watched her presentation, not once did she mention my archival research. Also, she did not introduce us to anyone or tell them that we contributed to some of the projects. Additionally, my poster was not at the event at all. This was really disheartening to me because I thought I was doing something helpful, but I was not. This taught me that not everyone’s perspective is the same. While I thought I was a part of the project, from her perspective she did not see that. It really frustrated me as well because the other groups in my class actually had a collaborative project with their partner. I realized that you cannot force connections with someone as well.  

Something I learned about myself is how important this work is to me. When I experienced what I did above, it really took a lot out of me. I really do want to help better East St. Louis’s community and contribute in some sort of way; I was just not given the opportunity to with my partner. This made me realize how much I overextend myself to people and how anxious I am sometimes. I was so anxious about doing enough in class this semester as I realized that our previous plans were not happening. I was also anxious about contributing enough to our community partners project because I thought I was useful for something. But the whole time I realized that I was anxious for no reason, and it is not worth that for me. Moving forward, I’m still going to put forth a lot of effort into research, but I will not extend myself as much. I realized I need to give myself more credit and stop worrying so much about being enough.