30th
I’m a Loner
Group work frustrates me.
As much as I know it shouldn’t, that people have to work in teams, that people should get along and help each other and brainstorm and blossom, I usually hate it. Give me an enthusiastic group where no ideas are scoffed at and everybody does their share, and I’m in wholeheartedly. But so often this is not the case, though I am thrilled to say that my group for this class is going to be awesome.
A worst group moment occurred last fall in Writings of Black Protesters- remember Eliot? We had an enormous presentation that had to be based on solid, academic research to support an asinine assertion made by our teacher who reveled in playing devil’s advocate. (One of the arguments was that the experience of slaves has no bearing on our world today because they did nothing to change their situation- can you believe one group had to debate that point????!!!) But that wasn’t the worst part.
My group of five consisted of one workaholic (me), one sort of interested person, one person about to graduate and admittedly didn’t care, one who was dumb as a box of rocks, and one who made excuses every class period. I ended up formulating the argument, handing out papers to each person that detailed what they were going to say and taking four minutes of our five minute debate plus 1 rebuttal. Awesome. The best part? We all got the same grade.
But we won the debate.
