#group works

Group work is the creation of the devil.

There, I said it. It sucks. As somoene who's consistently on the honor roll, and a designated Smart One™, group work is hell on earth,especially when your group mates are there to deliberately take advantage of you. But I've learned some things from them that I probably should share.

1. Not everyone has to do the same thing. People aren't made the same. Some can do research, some can do art, some can write, and some can buy food. I used to think that I would, say, read and summarize two sections of an assigned chapter, and the next person would read and summarize another two sections of assigned chapter, and so on. And then we'd all make a couple of slides each and would present our owns stuff. More often than not, it would suck. Instead, I should've paid attention to who was good at what, and divided the work according to what they were good at. When I had to make a comic strip that summarized a Greek play, I read the play and wrote the script, another girl did that art and drawing, someone else colored inside the lines, and the last one bought what we needed and sat quietly. Be the good leader and find out what every member is good at and use to it your advantage.

2. Don't showcase everything you can do. What I always try to do at the beginning is to kind of... hide the full extent of what I can do, so that people won't just keep dumping work on me. Of course, if you go to a small school and have a reputation, this is another story; but as much as possible don't let everyone know all your talents. You'd be surprised how many people there are who can do things competently but would rather dump the work on someone they know is reliable. If you need to make improvements to whatever someone else has done, do it subtly. This goes for everything you have, too; for example, if you have a cutting machine at home, don't advertise it. You could volunteer to do the cutting but don't say how, because then people would just ask you to do a lot more. Is it manipulative? Maybe; but you need to protect yourself first. Whether they do it intentionally or not, people will take advantage of you if they can.

3. Don't be afraid to snitch. Girlllll okay this is complicated. There have been times where I've done a lot (or all) of the work and still protected my groupmates; I understood that some of them had real stuff going on whether at home or school, and for the sake of civillity and compassion and empathy, I let it go, even if it cost me 10 years of my life. I'm extremely privileged to not be crippled by physical or mental illness, or troubled by family or anything else, and I try to do my best to help others who need it. But don't be gullible, and learn to discern whether someone couldn't do their work because of their very real anxiety/depression, or because of their very fake life problems. And if you need to snitch to get yourself the grade, even at the cost of other people's lazy asses...do it. I've always struggled with snitching on others, even if they deserved it, but always be reminded: protect yourself first. No need to be an ass, but be good to yourself.

4. Take the easy way if you can. Please don't give yourself an unnecessarily difficult time. I'm a perfectionist myself and I always hate to pass anything less than perfect, but at the same time my health is extremely important to me, and I need to balance my academic work with my extra curriculars and the little social life I have. Pick the easy, boring research topic instead of the difficult, more interesting one if you know you can't handle it; do the scrapbook digitally and have it printed instead of cutting so many pieces of paper if you don't have time. Pick the essay topic that's been done before if you're really busy. Don't expect yourself to complete work meant for five people on your own. Aim for quality but also ease; there's nothing wrong with not going all-out if you can't.

Me: [ Has worked a lot already for the project in advance ] I guess I’ve done my part on this paper! I’ll just leave the rest to the others.

[weeks passed until its the day before the deadline]

Me: Alright! Lemme see hows the thing going. My groupmates hadn’t messaged a single thing so I assume the project is done already?

Me: [checks]

Me: Oh hey;;; they must have finished it in one sitting??? Let’s see...

We have a group meeting at 9am and I'm the first one to arrive before said time. And now 3 mins after 9am, they are still not here. Guys naman, kapag magseset kayo ng oras please make sure na you'll be there. I am aware naman na may mga unforseen event pero kung lagi na lang hindi kini-keep yung time, e sana di na tayo nagset. Sayang yung oras please, tapos some of us have things to do. We freed our schedule just so we can finish this group work. Please, be mindful naman of other people's time. 🙃