Group projects. The phrase alone is enough to incite feelings of dread in current and former students. The meetings, the deadlines, and the stress. Oh, God, the stress. As a Mass Communications major, my academic experience has been riddled with group projects since the beginning. For some twisted and unbeknownst reason, I keep coming back for more.
Truth be told, I don't hate group projects completely. But as a person with a certain amount of social anxiety, I do dread them. More often than not, it isn't the work that gets me anxious. It's the people. You see, group projects are a wonderful crucible of ideas, exchange, communication, and collaborative effort toward a goal. In a perfect world.
While they serve as useful platforms for collaborative effort, most group projects also end up being a smoldering cauldron of ego, gossip, and unbelievable amounts of cattiness. For a socially awkward person like myself, it's enough to make my stomach turn. And of course, the higher the stakes, the higher the stress. And the higher the stress, the higher everyone's respective insanity levels will be.
Because group projects are a crucible of ideas and talents, it stands to reason that the people responsible for those ideas and talents will have very different personalities. This is where the problems begin. Fortunately, I have had a couple of mentors throughout my college career that keep me afloat when the group's collective psyche inevitably rears its ugly head. Although I'm a senior, I still have a lot to learn, and I rely on the advice I have gotten from these mentors to this day. Okay, to this very minute.
One incredibly useful piece of advice is simple, but surprisingly difficult to adhere to. That advice is to ask for help. Why is that hard? Well, if you're anything like me, asking for help means a lot of things. It means humbling yourself and admitting you're confused. Sometimes this is to a person that you don't like. You risk others being frustrated with you for needing help to begin with. On some level, that terrifies me. However, as this group project guide pointed out to me, the goal of the group always inherently outweighs any differences in personality. In other words, people will be willing to help you even if you don't get along, because the credit for a project goes to everyone.
That collective ownership serves as a powerful reminder for me. It's a reminder that when the stress mounts and the fights begin that the people I'm working with are all driven, competent adults, unified in purpose. I've learned through the years as well that stress only serves to magnify our own personality flaws. Stress is inevitable when the stakes are high, but managing it will save your mental and physical health, and prevent those terribly awkward moments when you make an idiot of yourself by shouting at someone.
Reducing stress has the added benefit of increasing confidence, and confidence is truly the substance on which successful group projects thrive. Success in groups occurs when each member has confidence in his or her other team members and the team as a whole. It also happens when we learn to have confidence in our own abilities, and how those abilities contribute to the greater good. As members in group projects, we would do well to remind others of their worth and their importance, rather than cutting them down. Many of us could stand to remind ourselves of those things as well. As self-awareness increases, potential for shared success does as well. Success in group projects, and even in that all too elusive "real world" always comes after understanding that the result of a careful combination of diverse opinions, talents, patience, kindness, and a whole lot of hard work is inevitably brilliance.
