Group work skills are essential for students

Remember when your elementary school teacher went around the classroom numbering off the class? Most kids jumped for joy but the sensible children beat their heads on their pine-andClorox-scented desks. Maybe they didn’t, but they wanted to. For the majority, group work was an easy grade but for others, teaming up with a bunch of unreliable parasites meant they would have to forfeit watching cartoons or going to the playground that afternoon. Either that, or sacrifice their good grades. Those were the days, right?

Unfortunately, college is often no different: The fact that this is college doesn’t faze some people who play the same childhood games. In fact, with all the extra responsibilities everyone has as an adult, it’s even more tempting to let the fireballs do most (if not all) the work.

It’s irritating when no one else puts forth their input. This leaves one person to do all the thinking and problem solving. The good grade is given to all, even when only one did the work.

It’s also annoying when someone puts in all the input and does not take anyone else’s ideas into consideration. Some of us have been there. We have this great idea and then it gets blasted to smithereens because it deviates from the leader’s master plan. Suddenly, we’re not so much of an Einstein anymore.

At the advocate, we understand what it’s like to work as a group. We are a team every day of our current lives and we will remain a team until the end of the school year. Though taking the easy road out of meeting all one’s responsibilities may work for a project or two, trust us, that person is only making their life harder for when real life knocks them off their feet. In the real world, letting one person do all the work will not fly, except maybe that personwhen her or she gets fired and booted out of the building. Don’t be that person.

College is likely the last step before you face the real world. Learn how to communicate and be a resourceful asset to your group or team, now.

Though the majority of work in college are individual assignments, the work you do as a group is more common out in the job world. Very few careers require one person to do everything on their own. That said, it is also beneficial for those who usually pull everyone’s weight to learn leadership skills and encourage others to pull their own weight.

We could go on about what instructors could do to create better work group criteria, but by now, we as college students should know how to properly function in a group. Everyone should be putting it into practice, if they haven’t already.