by Bridger Frandsen
You know the drill. You’re sitting in class when the professor explains the next dreadful group project. Instead of letting you choose your group, meaning your friends or the smart fucker in class, he demands you count off by numbers, randomly assigning you to your new clusterfuck.
Now it’s awkward
You find yourself in a 4 week long polygamist marriage with 5 strangers.
There’s always one who isn’t a complete stranger though. You’ve had classes together for years but now you have to awkwardly ask them their name because you didn’t care to remember it in the past.
You get stuck with that overly outgoing guy in class that you want to punch in the dick already, and now you have to listen to his bullshit in your spare time. There’s a reason none of you are friends, and its painfully uncomfortable putting on a half assed smile as you introduce yourself.
You get to exchange phone numbers and emails, 35 useless digits that take up space in your phone. Leading to the group text message that inches you closer to homicide every time someone suggests meeting up to collaborate.
Group think
For the uneducated who don’t know what this means, group think is a decision making process that discourages creativity or individual responsibility. For example, when overly confident Carol chimes in and nobody has the balls to refute her, her idea stands, whether or not her idea is worth the ingrown hair on my left nut. Or perhaps the hot dumb girl is in your group. She presents a stupid ass idea, and because you want to treat her like your big toe and bang her on every piece of furniture in your house, you smile and agree with her senseless suggestion.
Low Priority
Everyone has shit they’d rather do instead. When you’ve got a few weeks to finalize your presentation, might as well put it on the back burner. This is college, you procrastinate. We let it marinate in a shit stew until the night before. Then, when it’s time to rise to the occasion, like the drunken students we are, we word vomit all over our professor’s lap and hope for a pitiful C.
Schedules
You’re busy with other classes, assignments, exams, and your job. Five students will rarely have overlapping free time. You have a personal life and don’t want to spend your precious free time working on a project you don’t give a damn about with people you don’t like.
Free loaders
There’s never an equal distribution of the work load. There’s the group leader and one person who isn’t retarded that they can bounce ideas off of. Other than these two, everyone else is useless. The excruciating part is everyone is going to receive the same grade, even though two never showed up to a meeting. Tom was too hungover and Susan was on her knees getting her A- for another class. Still, the workhorse and the worthless turd get the same grade. Too bad it’s not like survivor where you can vote off the village idiot.
Unfortunately group projects are abundant in college courses. Professors see the importance of teamwork and use these agonizing assignments in an attempt to improve our cooperation skills. Group projects are inevitable. Each a nightmare in its own. When given a group project, don’t be one of the douchers mentioned earlier.