Blog Post Week #14

With the end of the semester upon us, it seems that teachers pile on the assignments. One assignment I have never enjoyed or seen the benefit in was group assignments. That is until now. For my organizational communication class we had to conduct and intervention project with a local non-profit organization. For this assignment we had groups of five people. We chose to do our project on The American Red Cross. For this we each had to conduct to personal interviews with representative’s form the organization. Together we created an interview guide to use and have consistent questions. So far the project was off to a good start. Then came the task of getting contacts for the group. This was not terribly difficult. We ended up finding enough contacts for all five of the members of the group. The struggle was with getting and ensuring that everyone conducted their interviews and on time. This is where the group fell apart. Out of the five members, only two completed the interviews thoroughly and on time. Being that I am someone who likes getting good grades and works hard to get them, I was not going to leave this assignment in the hands of the members of my group who did not pull through. In the end, myself and one other group member completed the project. We wrote the paper, designed the presentation, and put the whole package together. When the assignment was all done and completed, I felt no relief just exhaustion. When I was working on one portion of the assignment, my sister called me to try and arrange a time to get together and have dinner. She could sense the frustration in my voice and asked me what was wrong. I explained to her the group project and said “why do you do group projects in college? I just don’t get it!” My sister, being a graduate two years ago from the University of San Francisco, said to me that in college she never understood why professors assigned group projects but that when she was out of college and in the “real world” she realized that life is a group project and that was preparation. So in the end, what I learned is that I have a lifetime of group projects ahead of me where I am going to have to work with people I may not get along with or like or they may not pull their weight. But I will have to learn to deal with it and do the best job I can do.

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