The Group Relations Conference was definitely one of the most remarking events that I have attended so far in my life. I did not expect to end the conference with so many emotions. I still remember the intense, complex feelings I felt throughout the weekend, especially the second and the third day after our large group session. I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I still remember telling the consultant at our debrief session that I wanted to cry for no reason. I also remember still that I started crying at our goodbye ceremony when one of our group member spoke about his identity of being an African American in the conference. I wished that I could learned things without going through the negative emotions because I knew that I was not good at handling it. Ive always been a very positive person and did not like to go through all the pain and never have thought about learning through pain and anxiety. There were many moments during the large group meeting that made me feel uncomfortable. At the last day, I wish there could be people mentioning about how grateful we were to be with each other for the entire weekend, instead of going against each other’s identities and creating such a chaotic atmosphere that made many of us shut down. It took me the entire week after the conference to recover and reflect upon the learning. The conference took place right before thanksgiving, but my negative emotions were so strong that I couldn’t enjoy celebrating for thanksgiving. Instead, the memory pieces from the conference kept coming back at me and I was trying to figure out the whole time what is causing me to have such painful emotions.
Although I had a lot of negative emotions during the conference, now that I have dissolved my feelings and was able to reflect upon, I do appreciate attending the conference in a good way. After the conference, it changed my preconceptions about the people and how people would interact. After the conference, I began to emphasize on my awareness of the individual’s actions and words and the behavior in different situations. For example, I began to pay attention to the individuals in the subway- which I have not thought about putting on such focus on groups im not familiar with in any way.
During the small group session, our group members had an amazing time even though the consulting kept trying to create chaos between our group members. The intervention from the consulting seems to be not effective because our group has created such a respectful atmosphere between one another. We opened up freely for each other, talked about our experiences, our backgrounds, our identities, both explicit and hidden identities. We had such a strong bond within our small group that
I shifted my focus into getting to focus on myself more versus how others would think about me. However, as I attended the conference, I realized that this is not something that I am in control of. I am consciously aware that people are judging and and being aware of you.
During the conference, I experienced a sense of confusion and frustration. I have so many questions in my mind that I wanted to ask the consultant and our peers- to get clarification of what is going on in that world. I personally think that the mystery of the staff members takes away from the conference because I was constantly trying to figure out their feelings and intentions. If the staff members could provide more context at the end of the conference, I think it would add to the experience. Although I do agree that the consultants were right that the conference was about learning about my own experience, however, thinking about other’s purpose and intention is also a great experience to learn about the complex system. In addition, I found myself extremely confused in the large group setting because the comments made by the consultants were so vague and aggression that it frustrated me sometimes. I also was aware that many of our group members adored the consultants’ authorities and continued on the conversation, which led to many conflicting conversations between the group members. I inclined to be an observer in the large group discussion because it was too much for me but opened up freely during the small session group and the review session. I noticed that I paid more attention to inviduals actions and words within the large group session as a participant. I realized that observing was the most comfortable phase of me when faced with confused and clueness situations. Learning things about my own experience what something that really stun me during this conference and that I would never have learned more about myself and others in a traditional classroom setting. The conference had definitely helped me to understand the roles I take up within a group and I was greatful that I got to experience playing in different roles to see how it can be effected.