Who else REALLLY loves group work? 

There might be a couple of people who raise their hands and praise, but altogether, people completely dread it. Maybe in high school where you were BFF’s with everyone and it was social hour, but in college it’s pure hell. 

The major that I am in has a lot of group work in it. When I say a lot, I mean every single class, and I’m taking 5 classes. Some of the group work was rather small and not as involved, but most of it is a long, drawn out process that makes you want to pull your hair out. The group work that I did recently involved a group of 5-7 people discussing a topic they were “all interested in” which was a joke, because not everyone was interested in the topic they ended up getting stuck with. I’m not a very persistent person, either, so I don’t really fight things unless it’s something I firmly believe in and am educated about.

So I joined this group casually and we had things due a lot. A lot throughout the week, and at the end of our project experience we were to present (no, not all of us) and then rate our group. Our group consisted of two rather quiet people, three people that literally just went with the flow, and two leaders. This caused a little bit of conflict because one of the leaders took on a lot, because it was what she was passionate about. All the rest of us weren’t passionate, and she found that she favored a certain topic more than the rest of us, so she got  most of the research off the bat, and then we divided it up. They always wanted to do group meetings, and would still meet without all of the members there, because “that’s when they could do it.” They would not be willing to work around others’ times, because “they just couldn’t”, but expected people to naturally falter to their times. (I work Wednesday’s. All day. So naturally I couldn’t meet then and that’s when they did a majority of the time.) The next time I was required to do something for the group, i was supposed to meet someone to redesign our webpage. The girl who originally chose the template chose the most gothic looking one and didn’t like it, but we couldn’t change it that much since it went mainly off of your original template. Also, the time I was supposed to meet with that girl, I was attending my cousins visitation, and couldn’t really.

Weeelll, today we got the results of those back and our teacher typed out suggestions for our group. She informed us that we did well in what we did, but that people felt that the group work wasn’t all put in by certain people. I’m sorry? What? Just because you’re distributing things, and others cannot be there whenever you distribute them, this should not make someone a bitter asshole towards it. This should make the person more accepting of people since NOT EVERYONE HAS THE SAME SCHEDULE and not make people bitter towards everyone in the group. I know that I was more than likely one of those people, but that’s what you get when you have an imbalance of power. 

SO BASICALLY, for group work if it’s something that absolutely HAS to occur: if you’re one of those people that naturally feels passionate about something, don’t make it your point to take on a huge load of things and then bitch about it later on. That’s your own fault because you were the one that was extremely passionate about it and personally felt responsible, apparently. Secondly, if you’re naturally one of those people that goes-with-the-flow, try to speak out more. If you don’t, it’s only going to fuck you over in the end. If you’re one of those people who doesn’t like groups, accept it. It’ll literally happen your entire life. However, don’t expect all that much out of people. If you’re expecting a lot, you’re not necessarily going to get it because everyone’s different and everyone has a different schedule and things happen in life — especially in college— so don’t be a bitter bitch about it.