The Worst Things About Group Projects
I think we can all agree that group projects suck. In an ideal world, your group members are at the bare minimum tolerable and respond within the first 5 to 10 minutes of you sending them an important e-mail or text message concerning your project. Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. More often than not, we’re lucky enough to be paired with group mates who show up to class on a regular basis. And even if the group mates are pretty tolerable, just dealing with group projects, in general, can be a total pain. Who wants to try to coordinate weekly group meetings and remind their group mates about upcoming due dates and assignments? Not me, that’s for sure. And you know what’s horrible? You can’t even graduate from group projects in the “real world.” While you let that sink in, here are some of the worst aspects of working in group projects:
1. When your group mates don’t do anything.
Group projects should be collaborative. It’s all fine and dandy when the group is first set up and everyone agrees to do whatever workload they were assigned to do by the designated due date. However, there’s no real reason why only one or two group mates should be taking on a workload that is meant to be for a group of five or six group members because everyone else hasn’t contributed in time and no one wants to get anyone in trouble. It’s annoying.
2. When your group mates don’t have a mind of their own.
It may be even more frustrating when you’re stuck with a group that never has a clue on what to do next. The professor provides us instructions on how to complete the assignment for a reason, so refer to it when you have questions about what to do that have already been answered both in-class and in the instructions. And if you do have a question that hasn’t been answered, what’s stopping you from e-mailing the professor yourself?
3. Group mates who are “always busy” or “don’t have any time”
I get it. You’re busy. But so am I. Do you really think I want to make time for this group project when I can be going out or doing something more productive with my life? Of course not. But I do so anyways because I care about my grades and I’m not a complete jerk. If I can make time, you can make time, somehow or someway.