It's not always fun when you are grouped with a bunch of strangers and told to get along. There will most likely be a personality clash or two. The situation can be managed, but only if your group learns how to effectively interact with one-another.

I recently applied for a job as a resident assistant for on campus college housing. The first stage of the process is to attend an open-house. I was placed in a group of 9 and attended presentations of the different dorms that we could potentially find work at.

My group was group C. It was made up of four boys and five girls:

Michael, Benjamin, Derek, Aubry, Savannah/Caroline, Gladys, Amber, Taylor, and myself, Bailey.

We hardly said a word to one another as we traveled around the building and met representatives from each residence hall. No one was aggressive or stand-offish, but we were treating each other like strangers instead of team members. I care about making connections with others, so that especially bothered me.

The next step was group-process day. The group that you had been placed in for the open-house would now be given challenges by RA facilitators while other RA’s took notes on our behavior. Based off our behavior the night before, I was worried about how everything would go. How our team interacted would be what decided if we would be invited in for an interview.

We were given three challenges that day. In our first challenge, we were each given a sheet of paper. It listed fake RA applicants and a short bio about them. Based on their social activities, age and school involvement, we had to unanimously decide on 3 applicants we would hire. We worked by ourselves for 10 minutes and then discussed it as a group.

The discussion started off rough because we all wanted a turn to speak, but after a few minutes we had picked up a rhythm and little tells to let others know when we were about to talk. We bounced off ideas and even changed our opinion on which applicants would be a good balance for the diversity at LSU. We successfully came to an agreement, with time to spare.

I was starting to feel better about our group dynamic after that.

The second challenge was about ranking behavior on a scale of most to least ethical (giving each a number on 1-12 scale but only using each number once). We were given 15 minutes to decide the rank for ourselves and then had 20 minutes to discuss it with the group and come to a unanimous arrangement. Our communication skills had increased significantly since the earlier challenge. Everyone was contributing their opinions on how to rank the statements and confirmed their ideas by sharing their dorm experiences. There was more of a debate in that challenge, but we did great in settling where everything should be. We finished with over 15 minutes to share and decided to play hot seat as an ice-breaker.

Hot seat is a game where a person has to answer random questions from the group for a solid minute. Our group got to know each other on a more sociable level. I learned that Aubry worked at three radio stations around Baton Rouge. I learned that Savannah goes by her middle name, Caroline, and that Derek was fascinated with math and physics. Gladys wants to visit Germany and Michael would rather fight a horse-sized duck than 10 duck-sized horses. Even the RA’s got on board with the game. Our facilitator said that she would rob a bank if she could get away with any crime (do not hold that against her).

We walked to our last challenge with higher spirits and actual conversation. The last challenge was an escape room. We had 35 minutes to unlock a box, using clues that were planted on the walls and inside of furniture. I do not want to get into the specifics of how we unlocked each lock, but I will say that if one person had been missing from our group, we would not have been successful. Our team dynamic was cooperative, and no one was a dictator. We finished with 11 minutes to spare: the fastest time that day.

The RA’s sent us on our way after that. Me and three of the girls in our group went to the Union for lunch. It was a cool feeling: going in to the process with strangers and leaving with new friends. I would be happy to be on staff with any member of my group. I feel that we all deserve the position.

It really shows how important it is to talk to each other and why we must fight the awkwardness of being put in a different environment head-on. I used to think that ice-breakers were stupid because I always hated trying to dig up an interesting fact to share about myself. . Regardless of whether you are working on a homework assignment or toward a common goal, it is important to know each person in your group by more than their name.