Board Game - Reflection Paper

Purpose of the reflection paper:

This reflection paper describes my tryst with reflective learning while playing the game Forbidden Island. It focuses on the issues faced by me and other members while progressing towards successful completion of the board game.

Before reflecting on my individual performance, I would like to briefly describe the overall situation. At the end of the 5th lecture when we were told we would be playing a game in the next class, it triggered multiple emotions and questions in my head. Emotions such as ecstasy, amusement and that feeling of being a child again and questions like- why do we have a ‘game’ as a part of our curriculum we are all grown ups, what could a game possibly teach us that we have never learnt before and so forth. Being an obedient student and someone who likes to keep things under control I prepared for the game by reading the rules and directions couple of times before the class. But I realised that its difficult to grasp a game just by reading about it, because that’s never been the way how I learnt any game I played since childhood. So, I went to the class with half cooked knowledge. At first when we were given the game to play, I thought to myself that what impression is it going to leave on my peers if I tell them that I am not completely familiar with the game. Being an introvert of highest order I further could not agree upon telling the team that I would need time and assistance to play the game. However, as the time progressed and we began playing, I comprehended that everyone in the team had some doubts about the game and no one was 100% accurate. With a sigh of relief, I realised that without everyone coming together and contributing their understanding of the game, it cannot be rightly played leave aside winning it. In a way, that feeling of being a ‘team’ began to come out and everyone pitched in to make this game a success. Everyone’s understanding of the game worked like the pieces of puzzles, if joined together in the right order would complete it. By discussing and collaborating we were finally able to get all the concepts right and were ready to begin the game.

This experience has led me to understand how the concepts that we study in the class impacts our daily life. It enabled me to visualise how everything that I had studied so far in Organisational behaviour has actually left me with learnings for the ‘real-world challenges’. I learnt through this stimulation that I am likely a high self-monitor and my actions at times are governed by people and environment around me. I am not able to be myself at all the times and have to modify my behaviour