Listening+to+Others+with+Understanding+and+Empathy

**Listening to Others with Understanding and Empathy** This skill became important when we had to do our digital story projects. Working with others was imperative in order for us to achieve a good grade and a presentable finished product. Listening and working with others was quite difficult for me because I am accustomed to working independently. I realized that it all comes down to trust: how much you can trust the other members in your group to do their jobs punctually and correctly. I was glad to discover that my group members were highly reliable and never failed in their objectives.

Also, listening to others was important as each of them wanted to speak their own thoughts about the project and contribute their own ideas. Every time someone presented a new idea, we would discuss among the four of us and decide whether or not it was A) effective and B) possible/relevant. For instance, we initially had wanted to do a stop-motion diagram of the process of eutrophication, but after deliberating over the idea, we reached the conclusion that it would not contribute to the overall mood and atmosphere of our video. We wanted our video to aim at the heart and appeal to their emotions and ethics; we thought that even though it might have been relevant to the subject, it would break the continuous "depressing" mood of the video and decided against it. Likewise went for ideas of putting in bloopers or anything that might have been considered facetious and playful. We made the right choice as after completing our video and watching it, I noticed the cumulative, unbroken effect of the emotional tone of the video. The video project taught me a lot, as now I trust group members more for whatever group project I may be involved in in the future.