Unna's Blog of Total Randomness

RE-BLOG: What I wish My College Professors Would Have Taught Me: Group projects can be completed alone. (via Bennis Inc)

25 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment

by Unna in Re-blogged entries Tags: advice, back-to-school, beliefs, blog, business, career, class, class-work, classes, college, degree, education, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, graduate, group-projects, groups, growing-up, homework, humor, knowledge, learning, learning-2, life, living, penn-state, penn-state-2, professor, professor-2, sarcasm, school, student, teacher, teachers, teaching, team-work, thoughts, time-management, united-states, wisdom, work, world, writing, youth

I couldn’t agree more on this.

I remember when I was applying for university – the director of my gospel choir suggested that applied for University of Roskilde.

This might require a bit of explanation if you don’t know that university. The thing is that it’s different than your average university, at least in Denmark: it starts with a basis of whichever faculty you choose to study; be it humanities, science, or social studies, which will take you a couple of years before you can go on study on the specific study you want to focus on.
Another thing is that they have a major focus on group work. Every time you have to do a project – which is another thing they focus on: working on projects instead of regular lessons – you have to divide into groups, which can take up to a week, I’m told.

When the director suggested that I applied for University of Roskilde, I could have laughed as easily as I could have groaned and booed her out of the room. She seemed to think that I would fit right in there – but based on the very group work, I think she’s wrong. This I base on my experience from secondary school, where group work was also used. And we’re talking Higher Preporatory Exam here, a form of secondary school where you supposedly are an adult, somewhere else in your life, and more responsible (I was 25 when I graduated).

An experience that really stood out was when working on a science project. We only had a few days to complete it, and apparently I ended up in a group with a couple of the guys in my class who couldn’t get up in the morning. This meant that I met at 8 AM with a considerable lack of sleep (from staying up late to study and finish something for the project, if I remember correctly). The next member of the group showed up arund 9, and the boys showed up around 10 – and that was after me setting them straight (oh, bless the invention of cellular phones).

We did manage to finish the project. And I am a loner as it is. But working in groups like that doesn’t make my “love” of working in groups any better.

What I really prefer is that one does have a study group, but just to play off of, go to for help if one is stuck. I myself have very little patience left when it comes to waiting for the work of others in order to move on, and to be truthful, I don’t have the nerves to have people waiting for mine to move on – and in the end have a, well, somewhat coherent end result.
Sure, it might require a little more time to do such a project on one’s own, and/or the institution of education should ask for less pages, but nevertheless – group work isn’t for me, either.

There are some things that can and will never be taught in the classroom. Maybe it’s because those topics are seen as too radical or have been flagged as a lawsuit risk, but truly these are the missing pieces of wisdom that leave many college grads as an incomplete puzzle with still much to figure out in the real world. In the spirit of Back-to-School, this will be a 5-part series exploring the top lessons I wish would have been included in my ow … Read More

via Bennis Inc