Before you can start a group project, you have to be given a group. This is usually a fiasco in and of itself. Will you be with your friend… do you want to be with your friend? Do you want to be with the kid who you know is good at controlling a group? You definitely don’t want to be with that slacker who was in your group last semester. Once your professor hands out the group assignments, there are bound to be some bummers and some blessings. It’s inescapable, so get over it. Don’t complain about your group, which will only make working with them worse.
Next, you all have to meet each other. This was probably an easy enough thing to do years ago when that just meant saying hello, but now it involves getting everyone’s phone number. There’s the inevitable, “Does everyone have an iPhone?” and the nearly as inevitable apologetic look as someone holds up an Android, subjecting the whole group to GroupMe instead of iMessage. Either way, trying to get everyone’s number is never easy. Do you just each pass around your phone and have everyone add their number? Do you go person by person and say your number out loud to be copied down? Do you try to turn on Bluetooth and share your number with everyone? I think the easiest option is to have a designated number-getter who sends out the first group message with their name, and everyone else follows suit.
Now that you’re all in communication, you need to meet up. Someone suggests one day. Someone else suggests another day. The next person says something about the first day. Someone else says they think they’re busy. Someone else gets confused about which day they’re talking about. I get confused because I said ‘someone’ too many times… you get the idea.
Eventually a day and time will be settled on. It is only after you’ve all agreed on this that that one person who hasn’t responded the whole time will finally text back, saying that the time doesn’t work for them. This goes one of two ways; you either ignore this person and meet up without them (telling them all the while that it’s okay even though it isn’t), or you repeat the whole process over again. Either way, it’s a lose-lose situation.
Assuming that it is actually possible to find a time that works for everyone, you may want to breathe a sigh of relief. Don’t. Someone is bound to text the day before and say that another *mandatory* meeting came up at that time and they’ll have to miss the meeting. Again, this situation can go one of the two ways listed above. Pick which option to suffer through and try to move on.
Hopefully you will have someone in the group who is nice enough to send out a reminder before the meeting about the when and where. Even if there is someone to send out the reminder, someone is still gonna be late. If the reminder is not sent out, there’s a chance no one will show up. Or, my personal favorite, someone will suggest fifteen minutes before the meeting that we can all get the work done on our own and don’t need to meet up. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t want to have to wander around the Student Center trying to find where you’re sitting. I would rather be doing this alone, from the comfort of my bed.
After all the hassle, once everyone actually gets there (hopefully with some of the work done), group meetings can be super productive. You communicate with your peers, see things from their perspective, and learn something you may not have on your own. Group meetings can be annoying, but there’s a reason why we always do them– they’re great.
Now lather, rinse, and repeat for all eight semesters of Bentley!