Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Learning Team Retreat

I just got back from the Learning Team Retreat in Iriquois Springs, New York. The point of the retreat was for first year MBA students to to meet their learning teams and build leadership and teamwork skills with them. I already knew my learning team because all healthcare MBA students in a cohort will be on the same learning team. Thus when I met my cohort 3 weeks ago, I knew who my learning team would be.

We left at 6:30am from campus on Saturday morning and returned at 7pm on Sunday night. The retreat consisted of a lot team building simulations, most of which I had done before. I'm fairly skeptical of the value that simulations provide, because they are so different from what we'll actually be doing as a learning team. I've also done them several times, so it's hard to get excited about yet another 'trust fall'. The camp itself was beautiful, although it rained on Sunday, which prevented us from going in the canoe (and possibly canoe tipping, which is the main reason to canoe).

The highlight of the weekend was the free time on Saturday night, which I spent playing dodge ball in a cohort competition. Cohort B, my cohort won the tournament, beating A, C, D, E, F, and G. Many of those cohorts joined forces to play us, since we had all our team playing but they each had half of their cohort playing. I did not get injured, thankfully, but many others did. Stretching and warming up are crucial - I can't stress that enough.












2 comments:

Unknown said...

Rav:

How was the leadership & teamwork workshops? I personally never like them because they are so hollow - nothing to do with real life!

Mom

Owl said...

Completely agree. You'll only build those skills through real life projects.

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