Group projects are almost every college student’s worst nightmare. The thought of getting paired up with people and being forced to trust them to do work that lives up to your standards is terrifying.
On some rare occasions you might get put into a group that works wonderfully together. Everyone does an equal amount of work and supports each other. Some might even get along so well that they will rally together to support the other group members in a time of crisis.
I have recently been blessed with a group like that. We have all had so much fun working together that we are convinced that we will be lifelong friends.
Sadly, a very good friend of mine has not been so fortunate. He was put in a group where one of the members has done almost nothing and what she has done had to be changed because it did not meet the standards the group had discussed.
She did not know these standards because she rarely went to the group meetings. The meetings that she did attend she yelled at the rest of the group about them not being fair.
This was brought up with the professor of the class who then did nothing to help the situation.
Why does it have to be like that? Why is it that someone can just ride along on the efforts of their group and be given the grade that they did not earn?
This lack of support for students who actually care about doing well is entirely unacceptable.
If students working on individual projects do not do any work, they do not get credit for the assignment. But if they work in a group they just get a grade for free. The fact that nothing has been done about the situation with my friend reinforces a sense of entitlement in the lazy student who couldn’t care less about earning anything.
This will cause the student to later be disappointed in life because she won’t always get her way. There needs to be a source of discouragement for this behavior. People should have to learn that you are not just going to be handed everything on a silver platter. They should learn that most of the time you will have to work for something.
Working for a goal or grade will not only make the person doing so a better person overall, but it will also teach them to have pride in what they do. It will also make group projects so much more bearable.
This will give more people the chance to have a group like mine where we have gotten to learn about different styles of work and get to know each other and make friends and connections. It will keep people from being lazy and entitled and will teach them how to be an adult.
It will make every college student have a little less anxiety about working with other people.

SARAH BARTKOWIAK
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