This semester, I've significantly developed my critical thinking and teamwork skills both through assignments in the Work-Based Learning class and events in my job at St. Michael's. In this class, most of the assignments encouraged me to step back and think about events at my job and overall work performance. The Supervisor Relations Interview in particular, where I came up with questions to ask my boss and then received in-depth answers, built my critical thinking skills by challenging my weakest skills (mostly just tempo issues and lacking background knowledge of Episcopal tradition) and posing ways for me to improve my overall performance, like considering restarting the choir. I worked on my teamwork skills rather frequently through in-class activities, with the largest examples being the taped name-guessing activity (which I did good at helping others at but terrible in figuring out my own identity) and the initial competency-mapping activity (where I helped make and deliberate skill placements) and which saw me talk with people I was unfamiliar with and work to successfully complete tasks. Other examples would be the elevator speech peer reviews or other activities with peer reviews where I both analyzed someone else's responses and gave helpful feedback to improve their delivery or any of the Work Reflection papers which focused on giving me a chance to think about my own performance (1 & 2) and of my coworkers (3) in depth and consider examples (especially my work with the Trunk or Treat in 2 or the pageant in 3) of effective teamwork methods.
In my current position, I've been increasingly applying both of these competencies through events I've discussed in class assignments. Since the Supervisor Relations Interview, I've been seriously contemplating how my tempo will be perceived by my boss and the congregation and taking that into account when practicing hymns. I've also considered to ask more when I'm uncertain about the tempo or feel like I'm missing tradition that would help me choose stop settings, along with thinking of ways to incorporate additional music or long-term reboot the choir to meet some of the other highlighted needs. Two significant examples of teamwork this semester would be the Trunk or Treat in late October, where I worked with most of the congregation to have a fun and unique event with live eerie music, and the ongoing Christmas pageant which has seen me collaborate with a dedicated volunteer to make the most of a difficult situation with few participants or rehearsals. In both of these, I took suggestions from others on how to improve the events by adding my skills and giving feedback about both my progress and ideas on how the event should work.
In the near future, I will probably continue building these skills at St. Michael's by continuing to think of ways to improve how I serve the congregation and work with others to make special event ideas become reality. In the long term, while I likely will end up with an organist job elsewhere in my broader career, I see myself applying critical thinking to keep finding needs to improve (especially ones I'll have experience from after my first job, like hymn selections) while working as a team with others in the music department in a larger role or to be as useful of an asset as I can to my job. Ultimately, critical thinking and teamwork seem like skills that are vital to make me a more useful and adaptable organist as my career progresses.