We all know these types. The kind of person who has no discernable word as they always seem to be busy doing everything except their assigned work. Or the type that leaves at the very beginning of the project, does not communicate with the entire group, and then suddenly appears out of nowhere in the last minute and asks for a part. Since group projects are an integral part of schoolwork, it is quite hard to avoid bad groupmates.
There are many solutions to it, but sometimes it does not justify the amount of stress and work you have to put on just to finish the paper. In light of that, here are some tales of unprofessional, lazy, and generally annoying groupmates from my brother and one of my college friends.
Thesis It?
For many, their college thesis is their final hurdle to cross before graduation. It is something you persevere in as it takes both time and effort to finish it, as well as being the final project that you will do for your four year stay in college.
It will serve as a culmination of everything that you have learned as well as planting your mark in your university… unless you are these guys. This story comes from my friend who I will call Blue, who is an AB Psychology graduate from Ateneo. For her thesis, she had to form a trio with two other psych majors, let’s call them Bob and Ross.
Bob is the kind of student who does not bother communicating with his groupmates nor do he actually get along well with both Ross and Blue. Because he does not communicate with his groupmates he doesn’t know what to do, not that he cared, according to Blue. Adding to this, even when he actually attends the meetings scheduled by Blue he does not even do his assigned tasks and is a liability to his groupmates. It got to the extent that Blue had his name removed from the thesis because he was doing absolutely nothing for the project. It took him begging her to keep him and even his mom to personally talk to Blue for her to keep him.
Ross, although not as bad as Bob, was still an unpleasant groupmate to work with, according to Blue. Apparently he let his own issues with Bob hinder their project’s progress and was also quite uncooperative at first. He and Bob actually left Blue to finish the entire thesis virtually by herself at one point, though Ross did help Blue complete the project… for the final parts. So unlike Bob who was completely a freeloader, Ross at least tried to help, although at that point the only parts he could do were the final touches.
One-Man Filmmaking Group
This one comes from my own brother. He is a grade 12 student and for one of his subjects’ final requirement was a short film, including a promotional poster. This sounds simple enough yes? But the problem is, my brother was paired with groupmates that are best described as dollar-store primadonnas without the skills to back it up.
It ended up with my brother doing not only the promotional poster, to which he labored several nights stressfully trying to make the poster within the allotted time frame whilst preparing materials for the short film. His groupmates? From what I have seen from them, they barely helped him throughout this, as well as acting all stuffy and requesting he bring the materials to the assigned meetup. If that was not enough, when they ate out after filming one day, his groupmates had the gall to actually ask him to treat them.
The Ball is in Your Court
In the end, bad groupmates are a part of college life. However, we cannot control them, but what we can do is control ourselves. So, we should all do our share, and, never be that bad groupmate!
John Carlo F. Pagsolingan