i’m writing about this here for a couple of reasons. first, because of our discussions surrounding student entitlement and the idea that students don’t really know what they’re capable of. second, because this is psychology related and third, i feel like i’m part of a group of students who would be considered high achievers and perhaps they have some advice or suggestions for
in another class, i’m a member of a 5 person group writing a paper together. once we all composed our parts, we agreed to “pass it around” via email and edit, eventually coming to an agreement on what the final product should be. i was the first to edit and not only was i appalled at the level which i thought a couple of them wrote at (high school level if even that), there were significant required pieces missing from the paper. as a disclaimer, i have a communications/public relations/english degree and 10 years++ experience writing as well as some heavy duty experience writing for this particular professor. in any case, i edited. a lot. i also put notes together for the pieces that i thought were missing and i sent an email to the group and i told those people who were responsible for those sections to put my notes in their own words. my intention was to help save time and keep things rolling. i received a scathing email from one member of the group who accused me of being too picky and my edits made her feel incompetent and stupid. in essence, i was lashed out at for being “too smart” and waving it in their faces.
needless to say, i was shocked. the response to my actions was in direct conflict with my intentions. i’m thinking a lot about person/situation attribution and where i was focused on the project, she internalized my work as a reflection of what she perceived i thought of her as a person. i’m also thinking a lot about group dynamics and task-oriented groups. this semester i’ve had 2 group projects and both experiences have been less than stellar. i see huge discrepancies in the abilities and motivations of group members, not to mention the effect of other people influencing the grade that everyone earns. i wanted to appeal the group work component of the psych/human dev department’s learning goals and be granted permission to work on my own if i could demonstrate my history of group work and demonstrate my competence achieved from my last college experience complete with intense student organization involvement and management not to mention all the training/development/seminars/work projects that i’ve done for the last 10 years. i don’t know if any professor on this campus takes the time to explain how to work effectively in groups, but it may be an idea for peer mentoring sessions or freshman seminars or something. when i’m in a group, my focus is doing the best job possible on the task at hand, not on making friends and placating to group members’ need to feel valued as people. is this a maturity issue? in my opinion, adults should be capable of separating school business from personal business.
i reminded myself several times over the weekend that i’m working with 18-21 year olds. i’m 34 with a load of experience and extremely high expectations of myself. if i have these expectations of myself that seem out of sync with my group members, is it my responsibility to lower mine to conform to the rest of the group’s or is it their responsibility to learn a little from me and expect more from themselves? perhaps they don’t know what their capabilities are and perhaps no one has pushed them to discover them. more pondering is required and i’m curious to see how the project ends up. and curious to see what grade we end up with.