Group Work

Yesterday you were asked to write about situations in which strangers had to work together for a common goal. Many times as students you are put into groups to perform various tasks. How do you feel about group work? Do you like it more than working by your self, or less? Why? What makes it better or worse? Do you think you are a net contributor to the groups you are in, or do you tend to just let others in the group do most of the work? Why do you think teachers make students do group work so often? For example, do you think they are really trying to teach students to learn how to work together, or are they just making their own jobs easier by reducing the number of projects to grade? How do you think group work in school will prepare you for life after high school? Given the fact that in college you might have to work in groups even more than you have had to in high school, and after college you will certainly have to work in groups, how do you feel about the value of group work? 

•  I do not have any particular feelings towards teamwork. My feelings for team projects mostly depend on the situation. If the project is really hard, then group work is good since I can kind of depend on someone else to do it for me (evil, I know, but it works sometimes). However, if the teammates that I work with are incapable of doing the job and lazy, then I would rather work alone than in a group. I would say that I am usually one of the contributors of a project, unless I'm in the same group as "nerds", which include people such as Sarah and Alyson, etc. XD I believe that teachers tell students to do group projects because one, they want to grade less assignments, and sometimes two, they really care about the students and want them to learn the skills of cooperating with each other. I would say that most teachers do this because of the first reason (just my opinion, though; never know what the teachers are thinking about). Anyways, no matter what the reason is, learning to do group projects is an important skill for a person. We can only survive in this cruel world if we learn how to cooperate and communicate with our superiors and partners. To sum it all up, group work is something that everybody needs to know, even if they don't like it.