Q: I’ve recently started working on a group project that is worth a huge percentage of my grade. None of the members of my group has even responded to my e-mails yet, and I know it’s going to be impossible to get them to do anything. How can I negotiate the distribution of the work and make sure I get a good grade with such bad group members?
A: Group projects are inarguably the balls worst. It basically means a third of your grade is in the hands of your stupid classmates. Some majors, like business, have them in almost every upper-level class. You know that kid who sits in the back and only raises his hand to reference his yearlong stint at the Renaissance Festival and absolutely, no matter what, never blows his nose? That kid will probably be in your group, and he probably doesn’t even own a computer.
Group meetings also double your class schedule. Unless you are only taking two classes and one of them is Introduction to Trampolining, you do not have time for six meetings a week for various projects.
How am I supposed to play Drinking Jeopardy, watch Community, The Office, 30 Rock, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and then Project Runway on Megavideo (including waiting for minutes on Megavideo) on a Thursday night and drink again afterward if there are group meetings to go to? How?! Now you’ve made me cry.
If any professors read my column (I sincerely hope they do not), just assume that none of us are going into professional sports and therefore simply do not need these group interaction and team-building skills. In fact, I hereby refuse to ever use them in the future (even if my karaoke band gets signed).
Getting together as a group is also supremely annoying because everyone has their own schedules, their own extra-curriculars and their own TV shows. I recommend an awesome little site called doodle.com, which allows you to put your availability and your unavailability (por ejemplo, Esti: Thursday nights = NO CAN DO) in a convenient online chart. This will force your group members to commit to various times when you know they’re reachable and available to do your bidding.
If you have a bad group, you will probably have to resign yourself to doing all the work alone. Once you get over the urge to kill yourself and drop out of school, take some deep breaths. This is actually better than delegating tasks to complete idiots and having them screw everything up. If you show the rest of your group members the vast amount of work you’ve done for their grades, they will hopefully be open to doing smaller tasks. As far as I’m concerned, I would rather write a 10-page paper by myself than do a single word of a works cited page. Most people therefore find me an agreeable group member (if any of my previous group members are reading this, sorry I’m also a lazy procrastinator with no printer).
I guess my advice is limited on this one and is mainly aimed at the academic system in general, instead of you. Stop assigning group projects, they are f–––ing stupid. My deepest condolences on your project — you probably have no hope of getting a good grade.
Esti Frischling is a senior English major. She can be reached at esti at umdbk dot com.
