5 Stages

Photo by Joel Learner via Daily North Shore 

Photo of me. 

Tickman's 5 stages of group development is found within everyday life. In my own life, this reminds me of the time when I was sophomore in high school. Growing up, I had the dream of being a volleyball and basketball player. Basketball was more of my strong suit and my sophomore year I tried out for the team. The first day I went to normal tryouts for the sophomore team but by the end of the day I was asked to go upstairs with varsity. I was the only one moved around into certain groups to see where my place was just like when Tickman talks about forming. The coach was trying to figure out where my role was on the team. I ended up making the varsity team.  It was nerve racking being with all juniors and seniors based on not knowing a lot of them very well at first. I felt the need to prove myself at every opportunity to show that I deserved to really be there. I ended up finding my place as a power forward based on my height. The storming stage for me was that I was the youngest on the team. I didn't have many friends in the very beginning of it based on people knowing I would take a spot of an older girl on the team and her playing time. The norming stage for me was when I made my first friend on the team. We connected on being the same position. From that point, I became friends with a lot of her friends. I connected with a lot of the girls even though I was the youngest on the team. I also was trying to work just as hard as them which helped. All my friendships formed then became outside of basketball too. Team dinners before every game formed us as a group. Performing became easy then. Our biggest competitor was Deerfield which the high school right next to us. We had a rough beginning but started to communicate and shots began to fall. We won the game in triple overtime. For the rest of the season, we won all of the games. It was because as a group we all came together and worked together to be successful.