Group Work
Unfortunately I’ve had many bad experiences with working in a group so I’ve developed a kind of phobia against the idea. I cringe whenever group work is mentioned just because your grade depends on the people in your group. Some instructors have paid more attention to the fact that not everyone contributes equally and grades each person individually but in high school that wasn’t taken into account…
I would have to say that my worst experience working in a group would be in high school. It was in my AP World Literature class so one would think that everyone in there put in SOME kind of effort right? Not so much…the project was also our final which was 25 percent of our overall grade. We were all put into groups and already I was kind of weary. Every time I attempted to discuss the project two people in the group would be talking about the football game on Friday and the other one would be texting her friends. It took some time but everyone got it together and we assigned things for each of us to do for the project. The project was an analysis on the book we were planning on reading and ours was A Clockwork Orange. We basically had all semester to work on it and I was under the impression that things were going well. Each of us were assigned to explain themes and other literary elements during the presentation and write it all out to turn in…a week before our presentation I heard that two people in our group didn’t even read the book and was planning on just watching the movie….we got together a few days before presentations and the two who didn’t read the book did a sad looking poster and had some notes scribbled in their notebooks. The other girl and I let them know what the book was about and what they needed to say since they had nothing prepared. Come presentation day they decided to explain what went on in the movie which is completely different than the book…the ending is even different! The other girl ended up interrupting and finishing their piece and they just stood by as we finished up the presentation. We got an ok grade but the process was definitely frustrating and they shouldn’t have gotten any credit for it. I guess the worst part was that the instructor was informed that these two weren’t doing any work and she didn’t do much about it. It was definitely an experience I hope not to relive…
