My Pecha Kucha Experience...

Pecha Kucha Experience

My experiences with Pecha Kucha… Well, our topic was “European Day of Languages”. I learned a lot while researching for this topic:

·         how Europe promotes languages

·         how important minority languages are for Europe

·         and how desperately Europe tries to protect its culture

We have talked about all these at our presentation and, to be honest, all these information won’t be that useful in the future. But there is one thing, that I’ve learned during preparing this presentation and that I will always carry with me my whole life: team work with a stranger. My partner is not an easy person, I’ve told him that as well. And I know that I’m not an easy person. I mean, how can someone with an Aries zodiac sign be easy? Ce n’est pas possible, mon chéri. So, I want to talk about my experience in working with a stranger as a team.

My presentation partner chose our topic and I was not sure if it was the right one. I didn’t think that we could find enough sources for our presentation first but he was really enthusiastic about it and that was the first time I trusted someone’s gut feelings and I agreed.

After creating a shared Google-Doc, we started working on it. Somehow after two weeks, none of us had done anything. I knew that he was blaming on me that I hadn’t done anything, because I was doing the same. However, we agreed on meeting at my place and working on it. I think it was the day before the deadline. The night before, thanks to my guilt monster in me, I worked on our presentation. I found some useful sources, surveys etc. and finished up 13 slides.

When my presentation partner arrived, he had a really bitter face expression. I could see how mad he was that we still had not worked on anything. After I told him that I finished some slides, he started smiling. The real work was still ahead of us. He suggested something and I disagreed and I suggested something and he disagreed. I started getting frustrated first, but after calming down with cigarettes it all worked out – somehow. I realized that we had this language barrier between us. He could never explain it to me fully what he suggested and vice versa. So, we mostly illustrated our suggestions with examples and after that, it worked out pretty well.

During recording, there was this tension again. He always corrected my pronunciation and I did the same. Somehow, we finished it and we were also at the end of our nerves. Couple days later, I did the power point presentation without even asking him. After explaining our “chemistry” you know why.

When I look back now, it was a great experience working with someone like my partner. I learned how to work with people you don’t know and still achieve a satisfying result.