Group Projects In College

In high school when the teacher would say "This is going to be a group project." I would always be pumped. Now that I am in college when the Professor says "This will be a group project" I just start dreading it. Don't get me wrong I love working with others on things just not something for a grade, because you don't know who the "good" students are and if you don't really talk to anyone in the class it is very awkward to be like "um can I be part of your group?". This happened to be a few weeks ago in my Bio lab class and I was very awkward about it, I waited until there was literally no other option then to let me in to the group and then I was too afraid to ask what the topic we were even doing was. So when it came to writing out paper over the topic chosen by the group I was clueless.

I'm sure other students are much more comfortable with communicating with their fellow students. The other struggles that come with group projects is finding a time to discuss the project with them or practice the presentation. Everyone has such different schedules that it is almost impossible to find a time that works for everyone, without it being really inconvenient for everyone else. One time for a project the whole group had found a time that worked for them and everyone showed up on time except for one person and we had to wait for her to show up because we were making decisions that needed to be approved by the group. We all were left sitting in the basement of the library for almost and hour before the person showed up. Which caused stress because other members were only able to be at the library for an hour before they had prior commitments.

A positive that does come with group projects is becoming more connected with people in your class, especially as a freshman it is nice to get to create a connection with people that I might have classes with later in my life. There are other positives as well like not having to do all the work yourself and in college students are not as likely to put the project off on one member of the group and that is appreciated. Also college professors are very understanding if someone isn't putting in the work the other members of the group are able to comfortably go talk to the professor and explain the situation and the professor will take that into consideration when grading the project.