Letter To The Editor

Why all the group work? I understand why it is important to be able to work together as part of a team, BUT does that mean that we have to be forced into it in every class we attend? While not all group experiences during my stint as a student at Metropolitan State University have been bad, the vast majority of them have left me feeling frustrated, used and questioning my decision to return to school.

In class we aren’t given the authority to do anything if one or more members of the group don’t participate. What is the lesson in the activity for those of us who care about our grades and wind up doing other peoples work? Evaluations of our team members don’t work well because, one, we never see whether our input was taken into account in grading the other members of our team and, two, evaluations can be subjective. Do you get graded down because some member of your team doesn’t like you (i.e., if you try to get them to do their part and they wont?).

It is a nasty cycle that seems to be repeating itself in every class I’ve taken over the last two years. It’s usually the same. One person gets put in charge of the group and then that person spends the entire semester trying to wrangle work out of others who either don’t get it or don’t care that much. Maybe I’m cursed but I can’t find a way to get out from under the role of project lead no matter how hard I try.

Please professor, understand that I don’t need any more experience in leading groups. I don’t want to pay for this constant hassle I’m here to learn other skills. Put someone else in charge or better yet mix it up a bit and don’t make us do group work in every class we take. Please stop making my grade dependent upon what others do and give us some authority to kick people out of our groups early on in the semester before they have made the rest of us miserable.

"Marge Smith"