… Or at least make and keep eye contact and smile back!…
RE-BLOG: Saying Hello: A Guide for Beginners (via studentdesignblog)
20 Sep 2011 Leave a comment
in Re-blogged entries Tags: art, cartoon, college, comic, design, drawing, funny, graphic-design, humor, humor-2, illustrated, life, life-2, running, sarcasm, school, student, virginia-tech
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
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.
via Bennis Inc