taking one for the team
It is the end of the term right now, which means much time being spent doing MAJOR PROJECTS for both of my classes (those would be: LIS 537 "Construction of Indexing Languages" and LIS 580 "Management for Information Professionals") and not as much time doing really fun stuff like reading, keeping up on American Idol news, utilizing the gift certificates I received for my birthday, consuming libations with friends, cooking, bloggin', perfecting my Portland urban walking tour, going to the farmer's market, building my cd tower annex, painting the rest of our house, making Kombucha, washing my car, learning sign language and more Spanish, talking J into letting us get Netflix, shopping for super cool stuff on Etsy and yoga.
Alas, "Construction of Indexing Languages" is not as easy as it sounds and "Management for Information Professionals" is, indeed, as boring as it sounds (no, wait, even more so). Both classes involve ginormous group projects that have been the focus of the entire term. I HATE group projects! Invariably, there is always one member of the group who is a major slacker (as is the case in one of my groups) and there is always someone who is way too serious and creates stressful energy where it could be fun (as is the case in my other group). The lack of cohesion in both groups gets me down and I just want to do all of the work myself and not have to rely on other people.
Right now, the success or failure of one of the ginormous projects is dependent upon the least dependable group member(let's call her Cathy).
This is causing me to lose sleep and have aches in my tummy and my head. What if she doesn't come through? Should the rest of the group conspire to put a "plan B" in place? Should we just make stuff up and hope that the professor does not fact-check? I don't know Cathy that well and am not one hundred percent certain if this is her typical M.O.or if we just caught her on a bad term or something. She keeps making excuses as to why she hasn't done things and the rest of us have been picking up the slack (well, in all honesty, Heather's been doing most of the work - that girl should change her middle name to "Initiative"! Ooh, wait, I do not know Heather's middle name -although it seems as though she has told me this already- maybe it IS Initiative!?!?!).
Problem is, Cathy is our lifeline to our contact "mentor" who will review our management project and offer her professional opinion. But Cathy doesn't respond to emails, then Mentor is supposedly on vacation (a two-week one, of course), then Cathy is sick, and now it's the minimal email response again. I wonder what would happen if another member of the group were to contact Mentor...What would happen if we did that and Mentor had no idea what we were talking about? What if Cathy hasn't done ANY of the things she said she'd do and the rest of us are sitting here waiting for her to do her part in interviewing Mentor and it's not gonna happen? I sorta just wish I could fire Cathy - I know that sounds cruel, but -hell- it's a management class and we can't manage our project with her ineptitude.
In all fairness, she needs to be spoken to, just like a "problem employee" would be...Ugh. I don't want to be the one to have to do that, but it's not exactly fair to have anyone else do it just because I don't like to. And while I know that Heather is as frustrated with Cathy as I am, I'm not sure that Lita, our other group member, is as frustrated with Cathy as we are. I feel like I'm on the show Survivor and I'm creating alliances and wanting someone else voted off of the island.
So, should Heather and I approach Lita with our concerns and see how she feels about Cathy and, provided that she shares our frustrations, approach Cathy as a group? What if Lita feels differently? And how much more leighway should Cathy be given before we take action?
Have I mentioned that I hate group projects?
June 7th can not come soon enough.
2 comments:
I had that problem multiple times in college. In fact, most of the professors I spoke to about these problems were considering doing away with their group assignments because inevitably the problem student would screw things up for otherwise deserving and hard-working students.
What usually ended up happening is the rest of the group would get together, conspire together and do whatever the slacker member was supposed to do. Then, on the last day, when the slacker would finally show up, we'd just announce to them that we no longer needed them and that they needn't worry about whatever last minute half-done crap they were going to throw together because we were already done. Then I'd let the teacher know exactly who did what. Made the slacker mad and made them get a zero, but I'll be darned if I'm gonna carry dead weight and not have it known.
Thanks for the support, j.d.! Pretty much what you describe is how things are turning out. Unfortunately, being a management class, our professor is under the impression that all problems should be confronted and that all problems can be resolved if handled properly. That is, I think he truly believes that if one member of the group does not perform well, that the remainder of the group is as much to blame as the nonperforming member. Gah.
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