Today I want to talk about something that almost every school attending person (and maybe those of you in the working world) hate to hear: Group Projects!
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Group projects.
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(how many more times will that be funny?)
They weren't so bad in elementary school. Most of the time you got to pick your group. From across the class you'd be doing this strange interpretive dance, hand signals, or even Morse code in the direction of your friend,
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hoping you were subtle enough not to get caught.
So, that wasn't so bad, generally. Middle school was a bit rougher, just because, well...Middle School. If you've been there you know what I mean. If you haven't I'll be a little more clear. You're not guaranteed to be in a class with your friends, so you may have to work with gasp strangers. Even worse, about 50% of the time it will be strangers that your teacher assigns you to. One one hand, not being assigned is nice, you can drift around until you run into another socially awkward student who doesn't want to stand up and declare that they have no friends in the class. On the other, you get to be less socially awkward if the teacher just tells you where to go. The group projects are always a bit slap-dash because no one has mastered the skill of taking control without being a jerk. Things don't get done.
High school isn't much different. Everyone's a little older, and if you're lucky you've got friends who carried over from middle school, so you can start sending flares and smoke signals when you want to work with them on a project. But it usually goes like this:
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The worst I have ever encountered, though, has to be the group projects in college. There are so many ways they could go, but let me share with you my most memorable experiences.
1:
I was the youngest in the group (not uncommon, I'm actually sort of used to it). And my social apprehension told me not to try and make waves, just sit back and let the adults do what they wanted to.
For this project we were summarizing a critical analysis of Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (7/10 would recommend). And by summarize I mean really, no opinions of our own, just tell the class how it is. Boom. Done. Easy. So the plan was:
- Read the essay (at home)
- Individually summarize and find thesis (at home)
- Meet, agree on thesis (during the one hour class)
- Split up essay (also during class)
- Write a portion of completed summary (at home)
- Present (I don't feel it needs to be said, but in class)
Sounds fairly simple. Except we couldn't agree on the thesis. Now, as a general rule (for those of us not familiar with essays) the thesis is generally at the end of the intro, so within the first 1-3 paragraphs. And even more easily, it's usually identified by the words, "I will argue" or "This will prove". No, instead we spent the better part of our one hour class trying to decide which of the sentences in the middle of the essay was the thesis.
Painful.
When we presented each of us had to speak for only 2-3 minutes. But still, a day before we had to present one of the woman in the group was extremely worried that we wouldn't have enough to say. So we met out of class and worked it out.
We were over our time, and I still don't think anyone learned anything from the jumbled mess we tried to present to them.
2:
Funnily enough this project was for a similarly themed class taught by the same professor. So, the group project was largely the same, but let me recap:
Summarize critical essay (this time for Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre [10/10 would recommend]).
Seven people per group. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
The thing with this one was that we were given just about a week to pull it all together. Not really a problem because it's not that hard of a project.
So we meet in class Tuesday. We agree, we will all upload our section of the group summary by roughly noon on Wednesday so that everything can be ready on the Thursday when it's due.
I'm a flexible person (not physically) so I'm always alright with someone saying, "Hey, I'm trying really hard to finish this but I have school/work/to deliver a baby but I promise I'll have it in a couple of hours." No problem. Thanks for communicating. Glad to be working with you. Name the kid after me.
What I don't like is just hearing nothing. Wednesday by noon we had all but two sections. One of the women emailed and politely informed us that she'd be getting her section up in a couple hours. Fantastic.
I heard nothing from the other.
5 pm: Nothing.
7 pm: Nothing.
9 pm: Nothing.
So I send her an email. [Side note: I'm not sure how it happened, but I sort of became the leader of this group. Maybe because I'd done a project of a similar caliber? Who knows.]
10 pm: Nothing.
11 pm: Fine, I'll write her section myself, at least we'll have something to hand in on Thursday.
I stay up 'til almost 1 am, nothing.
So, I think, "Well maybe she's dead/in the hospital/dealing with a tragic life event." That's fine. I'm nice.
8 am: "Oh, I was working all night and just saw this email, I thought we were turning stuff in next Tuesday. Is the presentation today?"
I had two reactions to this: Initially
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All night? Literally? That's amazing and I'm sorry you had to work for so long, really.
Quickly followed by:
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Yes it's today, why did you think it was next week?
So, like the nice person I am I email her right away, "Yes it is. You can go ahead and write something up [why did I write this? I can't tell you, but I gave her the option even though we have to present by noon.] Or we can keep what I wrote and you just expand on it for the presentation."
Now, when I write emails to people, especially of this nature, I sort of expect to hear something back, "Thank you so much, you're my savior and I worship the ground you walk on" ... Alright that's a bit much, but even just "Alright, thanks" would have been alright. But I got nothing.
9 am: Nothing.
10 am: Nothing.
11 am: Nothing.
And by nothing I don't just mean no email. I mean there are no changes to the document. Literally no contact from this girl.
Don't worry, though, at 10 I did get an email from another group member telling us that she was "sick and hurt her back" so she couldn't make it to class.
Now, I'm not here to question the validity of back injuries or illness. But, I have a little sister. I have three, but this story is about the youngest. When we had to do chores when we were little she would always come up with a reason not to "My arms hurt", "my head hurts," and the most common, "my back hurts". So perhaps you can understand why I'm both irritated and amused by the email from my group member.
Life goes on, however, and I realize that this woman is not my sister and might legitimately have a back injury.
In the end we ended up presenting Thursday. Despite being a person down and having one of our members being pretty unprepared.
Did it go well? Yes.
Did we get extra points for going first? Yes.
Did the professor love it? Also yes.
Did I want to rip my hair out during the process?
Yes.
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