Group projects have always been my biggest nightmare. In my experience, in college and in high school, one person is always left doing all the work, while everyone else just gets to put their name on it. In almost every group project, I have always been the one stuck doing all the work.
My senior year of high school we had to do a project in government class where we had to come up with a make-belief island and choose a form of government to rule that island. It was a fun project, we got to draw up the island, make up a flag and a name and choose our imports and exports. I was excited about this until I got my group. They notoriously did not help in group projects and just rode the wave while someone else did all the work. As we started working we were given in-class time to complete this so we had a time when everyone could meet up and there was no excuse to not help. HOWEVER, I received no help on this project, even with the in-class meeting time! It put me in a hard spot because I did all the work and I didn’t know whether I should let the teacher know or if I should just let it go. I chose to let it go but after that group projects had a bad taste in my mouth, and I had yet to have a group project prove me otherwise.
So naturally, when I found out we were doing a group blog post I was dreading it. Right in the thick of my semester with all my papers being due, I was going to be stuck doing a group blog post alone and letting other people ride the wave that is the grade.
I was wrong. The group that I was in for our group blog post was amazing. There was no one person doing all the work, but instead, we all split up the work and did our own part. We spent one day coming up with ideas and supporting quotes, all getting on the same page. The next day we all wrote our own paragraphs while still consulting and running things by each other and helping to edit for each other. We often bounced ideas off of each other so we were able to have one cohesive blog post where each paragraph flowed into the next. Everything worked nicely together. The last day we met we all edited the blog post TOGETHER. There were times when we all didn’t agree on what was being proposed, and we often didn’t agree on the wording of things. However, we still managed to stay respectful, even when we disagreed on things. We were able to compromise without hurting our blog post. It was a nice switch up from what I was used to with group projects.
This project has taught me something very valuable that I plan to bring with me to future projects and future jobs. This has taught and showed me that even if you have a big group with different views, the assignment can get done in a timely manner. It is a whole new level of respect and teamwork that due to previous experiences I had never experienced. I feel as though this is something I can write on my resume for future employers to illustrate to them that I can respectively work in groups with people who have different views from me.