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Uni group work - ARGH!
LewieP
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ok, so I am in my first year of University, doing business, and in my seminar group we got set a peice of work, a literary review, to be done in groups of 4/5.
Now, required of us was a 1600-2000 word essay, and 3x200 word sumaries of a peice of literature on a given topic per person.
One team member contributed nothing to the essay, did one very bad sumary, and 2 plajorised summaries. Everyone else in the team did their fair share or more of work. We ditched the 2 plajorised sumaries, and handed the rest in.
Now, although I resent carrying someone else, I said nothing about what had happened to teachers/lecturers. But it turns out that the teams we picked at the start will be our teams for the rest of the year. Any ideas as to what I should do?
Now, required of us was a 1600-2000 word essay, and 3x200 word sumaries of a peice of literature on a given topic per person.
One team member contributed nothing to the essay, did one very bad sumary, and 2 plajorised summaries. Everyone else in the team did their fair share or more of work. We ditched the 2 plajorised sumaries, and handed the rest in.
Now, although I resent carrying someone else, I said nothing about what had happened to teachers/lecturers. But it turns out that the teams we picked at the start will be our teams for the rest of the year. Any ideas as to what I should do?
LewieP on
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Universities tend to look down on things like that.
fixed
If that doesn't really work, there's not much you can do except go see a tutor about it and see what they suggest.
1. Become your groupmates' babysitter. Nag at them to get stuff done, criticise them when they do a half-assed job. Get used to tearing your hair out at 3am because the stuff they sent you ten hours before the assignment is due is absolute garbage. On the plus side, you'll get a lot of experience at telling people what to do. On the downside, they'll hate you and you'll put yourself through a shitton of stress.
2. Accept the fact that they're mouth-breathing retards and prepare to do most of the work yourself. If there are other reasonably intelligent people in the group, great, you can share the burden a bit. If not, it's all you. When dividing up the labour for future assignments, give the slackers as little as possible to do. Seriously. If it's a presentation, tell them to bake *cookies* or something to give to the class to encourage class participation. If it's an essay, ask them to find you three or four sources you can use to do the writing. It means more work for you, and there's a slight chance that you might offend some of your group members. Generally speaking, though, people who do shitty jobs on stuff don't care either way; they'll be happy riding on your coattails.
The following at not valid options:
3. Complain to a prof or TA that Johnny isn't helping enough. Your prof won't care. They may, however, laugh in your face and tell you "welcome to the real world." They may also think to themselves "hey, this Lewie kid is a whiner who thinks he's better than everyone else, I should mark him extra hard." It happens.
4. Magically talk the slackers into giving a damn. You can use the most elevated rhetoric in the world to convince them to work harder. You can appeal to their reason, to their emotions, you can try to instill shame or pride in them. It will not work. Some people just don't care. And some people are simply incapable of functioning at the university level. They will realize this, in time. And it is not your responsibility to try to convince them of it.
Personally, I tend to err on the side of option 2. When I get group work, I pretty much just assume that I will do the lion's share of it. It really isn't that big a deal to me, and it takes me less time to do things right myself than to fix someone else's sloppy shit. My groupmates are normally delighted to let me handle things. And on the rare occasions when I find myself in a group that actually *does* work, it's a wonderful treat.
the hard thing is the ultra-late last-minute work that you have to do in order to replace their work to get a good mark because nobody else will do it.
That might be the case elsewhere, but in UK universities it patently isn't the case. In many universities in the UK, each group member is expected to give an assessment and graded evaluation of the other team members at the end of each project, which counts towards your final mark in that class. In fact, I once failed a class because one of my team-mates gave me a bad assessment at the end of the project.
Whilst true that rousing rhetoric will only motivate a slacker for as long as it takes for something more entertaining and less difficult to come along and distract him, it isn't true that a slacker can't be turned around, or at least put to good use. The trick is finding the correct leverage and being a competent and thorough people manager - an effort which Lewie, quite understandably, may not want to expend.
This is undoubtedly the 'easiest' option, although it is more stressful and does encourage bad habits in yourself which may come back to haunt you in later life.
Fuck that. If his ass isn't pulling his end of the deal, he doesn't deserve to work with other people.
If you don't like the class, drop out. But if you have other people depending on you and no way to get out of the class, the decent thing to do is come through for them.
You should probably be able to fire him from the group, but don't expect them to go any easier grading. It'll probably be the other way around just because it'll look like you didn't start (or review) your work until near the end.
Then follow up on that threat and do so. Like Szechuanosaurus said, I'm not sure what the situation is like in the States, but when I told my lecturer that we needed to change the groups (and that my partner agreed, largely because he thought he was actually doing something and resented my bringing up his lack of any contribution what-so-ever), he did, and I got to work with someone else who was actually interested in doing work. My grades shot up, along with my new partner's. Him... well, I never really bothered to find out.
Or you could just ignore it. In a group of 5 people, this is feasible I suppose, but if you're worried that he's going to be bringing down the rest of your grades, then you need to take the initiative and do something about it. The first most important thing to do is TALK to him about it, and make it clear to him what the situation is (and if you feel it's best, precisely how thin the ice is on which he's currently jumping up and down on with his pogo stick). Do it with the rest of the group, so he knows it's not just you.
If he doesn't shape up, then your options are to either ignore him (which is an OK option if ultimately he won't drag down your group scores with him), or you can make it official with the lecturer. That's if you feel that the lecturer won't penalise you for it. My experience was that they won't, but I can't speak for your own lecturers.
Believe me, even when you get to working life you'll have to deal with guys like that (although they're admittedly a lot rarer). It's important to know how to handle these situations so that at the end of the day, you're happy and as few people as possible have been ticked off.
Hopefully that gives you some food for thought. I'd at least, personally, sit down with the guy and have a talk. An "evaluation," if you will.
But when it comes to business you need to start thinking like a businessman. Don't do this guy's fucking work. Tell him straight up you got nothing personal against him, but the fact is the work he's doing is a crock of shit and if he slips up one more time he'll either be fired from the group or turned straight in for plagarization. Theres no shame in turning a person in. At my university people were accused all the time by other people for cheating and general academic dishonesty. The guy is a bottom feeder and this is probably the only solution that won't show people you can be walked all over.
Nip this guy in the bud.