We have all been there, the first week of school, sitting in class with excitement when catastrophe strikes; the professor mentions group work will be assigned sometime during course. Group work in upper level classes with people you’re familiar with doesn’t seem so bad. The other students in your group are probably around the same age and have the same major.
The problem that I have with group work is in the lower level classes that have mixed years of students. The professor assigns the members to each group and says, “have fun, be creative, and you will make new friends!” I would rather be run over by an ice cream truck driven by Lady Gaga yelling obscenities than have to sit in another group project.
Group projects do not prepare you for anything in the real world; but then the argument is, it helps you with social skills and gets you to mingle with new people. If you have made it to college without the necessary social skills and without the knowledge to make friends, you probably have a few more problems than just showing up to a group project meeting. I’m sorry I wanted to stop doing group projects back when I stopped using colored pencils to write my name.
Oh, but when you get a job you will have to work in a group at some point. As this argument stands, things are a little different at a job than at a table in library with two of your group members hung-over from the awesome party they just were at till 4 a.m. One, at work you can get fired for being a worthless employee; in a group, you just get a bad grade. Yes a bad grade is bad, but there is no immediate repercussion that worthless student receives. If you get fired from your job you lose money, and everyone hates to lose money. Most of us see getting a terrible grade and just think in our mind, “Damn I got to do better than that on my next grade.” And reason number two, social skills aside, yelling and screaming about why the map isn’t colored properly doesn’t get you more friends. It does the opposite and makes you look totally mental. One word of advice, don’t do that.
Basically, at a university level group work isn’t just feasible or fair to students. So to make things easier for a student, that’s all of you, speak up to your teachers about your distaste for group work. Explain how that you don’t want to ask everyone what clever name you should call your group or how we are going to make the poster board sparkle. Or if you like group work; forget about this article because you are probably the lazy student we were talking about because you were too hung-over this morning to make it to the group.