Even if everyone in your group is trying to put the effort in and not a flake, arranging meetings in our modern world is a pain in the fucking ass, especially if you all have day jobs.
But if on top of that you do have one or several people in the group who are flaky, or lazy, or just suck at doing research you're put in this shitty situation where you either have to nag their ass to work, or just do their work for them. Which then leads to you being tempted to act like a cop and NARC on them to the prof in order to protect your own grade.
The only time I've enjoyed group projects is when the prof set aside in class time to work on it, otherwise it's a shit show, I'll take writing a paper myself over this shit any day.
group projects are training for sociopaths on how to manipulate other people into doing their work
Every group project I've ever done results in me doing all the work myself while the rest do nothing and claim the credit.
100% agree. The rationalization for school group projects is always "well you'll have to work together in the workplace" except group projects are not at all the same. In a workplace you are all in the same place at the same time and it's time dedicated for you all to work on it. Very rarely in a workplace are you required to coordinate all your different coworker's free time to work on a project together outside work. Group projects are good when you get class time to work on it, like you said. But unfortunately that's pretty much never because of how condensed academic schedules are.
i hated them to death while on the school, but my job has been glorified group projects for some years already and i found out the main problem with them was that most people usually cared nothing about the actual project. this alho happens during the work but there people care at least for their individual reviews so it's less painful
I had to do them for college lab reports and it usually fell to me, there's only so much one person could do then everyone sobbed about their B paper and the next time actually did their jobs. Where/when I went to school if you told the professor your labmates were slacking they'd just be like
"figure it out you're all adults."I had a blast doing lab work in groups, but having enormous coding projects with 3 or 4 other people? Where 2 of them aren't even showing up to class? And the final thing ended up being more than 10,000 lines of code? Yeah...
I'm an ML, and believe in Democratic centralism. All group project cadres will have an elected leader who delighted and reviews the work of other. Within the term of that leader the other members will abide by their commands but they will be subject to review at the end of their tenure!
In my experience throughout school, including in college, "group project" means "lazy assholes depend on the one who will actually do the work."
It's a petty version of the Prisoner's Dilemma where legacy pledge Holden Bloodfeast III and his entourage expect to be carried throughout their time there so they can do brobro things like SV instead.
I had a group assignment but was able to get out of the group and do it myself. So much easier.
People are a pain
I like them, even if I have often done the majority of the work. It's just fun to hang out with people and brainstorm.
Jesus, I should have gone for a marketing degree instead.
