definearth

Every college student to date will agree with me on this: Group projects are THE WORST. If a professor wishes to single-handedly destroy the relationships between his students in one day, he will assign a group project. If you see someone’s phone buzz thirty times in a row? Probably a group project. Group chats, google docs, and “Reply-all” emails are just the beginning.

My fall semester of junior year ended today with a fluids final. As much as I hate to say it, I enjoyed that final. It was two hours long, one sitting, limited amount of pain. Group projects, on the other hand, have no limit. First off, group projects commonly involve vague instructions. To add to the confusion, there is an uneven divide in workload among students. Some disappear off the face of Earth until the project due date, others take matters into their own hands. As if it couldn’t get worse, there’s no specified rubric or way to evaluate who did the work. Group projects culminate in nothing other than magic. What I’m saying is that if the group has anything to present in the end at all you have a miracle.

I mean, what do professors hope to achieve by assigning group projects? I paid this much for college so I could work myself out of debt. Not so that I could do another student’s work and answer group texts at 2am. Is it about learning how to deal with dead weight? Becoming more bossy? Building endurance? After three years, I can attest to the fact that one group project can do enough damage to last a semester. So please, dear professors, take it easy on us. Give us lengthy finals instead.