Breaking the eight-hour wall

First, I had no idea we would be doing a telecommunication project with students from the University of Louisiana Monroe (ULM) – around 8,500 km from Estonia. Moreover, I did not expect to be the only Tallinn University student on the team. After I found these out, I remember I was talking to my boyfriend, that I was very excited about this assignment. Of course, I was a bit worried because I did not know any of my teammates, but with the enthusiasm of a first-year student, I was ready to accept the challenge. In addition, we have all been through the pandemic, where talking to faces on the monitor while wearing a decent-looking T-shirt and pyjama pants became normal – how hard can it be?

Two days after the class, I drafted an email to the teammates suggesting the meeting time. I added the time slots suitable for me and calculated them into the Monroe time. I finally hit ‘Send’ after nervously proofreading my own email several times. In a couple of hours, I got a response from Oli – the Spanish teammate studying at ULM – asking if I had WhatsApp, which I did. We chatted on WhatsApp and she told me she would create a group when the others installed the app. It took seven days to get everyone to the group as they had to figure out how to use it, and I accidentally left out one teammate from the email list and added a person from another team (I was so embarrassed!). Lesson 1: Not everyone uses Whatsapp, and always check the recipients.

First, it was a struggle to find the right time that suited everyone due to the 8-hour difference. Nevertheless, eventually, we agreed that the morning time in Monroe and evening time in Estonia would be the best. I was super thankful as I am not a morning person at all, and it would also be very hard for me to wait until the middle of the night as I have a full-time job. We had the first meeting via Zoom but it was annoying that it only allowed 40 minutes for free accounts while we had so much to talk about. We found out everyone was using iPhones, so we moved to FaceTime after we were kicked out of the Zoom call. There were four of us: me, Chole and Caleb from the US and Oli from Spain living in the US. I liked the diversity of our team, especially the fact that Oli and I are both expats, which means we could add insights as a foreigner of different cultures.

Everything went wonderfully at our first meeting. We got to know each other and had ideas about how to format our first assignment. Since I was the one who had the idea for the formatting, I made a draft and sent it to the group. Another challenge began here: it took a lot of work to get responses right away, making it difficult to get feedback on the draft. I am on the long-term-oriented side when it comes to group assignments – I get peace of mind when things are done in advance. I got anxious when some of the parts we divided to be individual work were not filled until the last moment. After all, the assignment was submitted successfully, but I thought it would have been nicer if there had been equal participation.

From the second session, things definitely got smoother – we set up the meeting time more easily and tossed around ideas that are more creative. We also addressed the issue of unequal division of work, assigned the individual parts more wisely and agreed that we would use more creativity that later can be implemented in each other’s work once we gathered all the parts. Each time we did our tasks; I was awed by the creativity of my teammates and learned so much. Chole had an amazing way of making slides with interesting images. Oli also showed excellent skill in visualising what we discussed in the slides, and Caleb had great ideas and fun facts about topics. Finishing the assignments at the last moment did not really change, but I figured some of us excelled when the deadline was looming, so I stopped feeling anxious. Lesson 2: Not everyone has the same working style, a division of work is crucial for a team project, and communication is key to finding out each other’s working style and strengths for better work division.

I have to say it was not a smooth journey all the way, but overall I feel like I am one step closer to being a good communicator through this experience. The course was about intercultural communication but, in essence, also about learning about yourself - how you are different from others and how to overcome differences and collaborate to achieve the same goals.
Thank you to the professors, Dr Sara Kim and Dr Anastassia Zabrodskaja, for this opportunity!