Tips for Surviving Group Projects

Group projects are the worst! They are especially horrible when you are not permitted to choose your own group, but are simply thrown into a group randomly selected by your professor. I know when I was in college, I always dreaded group projects. Usually, I would end up doing the majority of the work, while the rest of the group slacked off and inevitably got the same grade as I did. Not only that, it was also difficult to find times that everyone could get together to work on the project. So, here are a few tips I've come up with from my own experiences that I think will help make the group project a bit less terrible.

1) Make sure that as soon as the groups are announced, you get with your other group members and get their contact information. I remember one time I did a group project with this one guy and he disappeared on me for a week, and I couldn't get in touch with him because I hadn't gotten his phone number.

2) If someone else doesn't take the lead in the first group meeting, you should step up; if no one decides to be a leader in the group, the project will never come together.

3) If you are having difficulty finding a meeting time/place that works for everyone, try to at least meet once, and then once you have an idea of where the project is going, delegate! Every group member should have a task that he or she can work on alone, seperate from the group. This will get things done much quicker, and will be much easier than trying to get everyone to meet several times.

4) If it seems like someone in the group is obviously not pulling his or her weight, don't be stupid: tell your professor! There is no way the professor will be able to grade everyone fairly if he or she has no clue of what is going on.

5) Make sure not to take on the entire project alone. Sometimes it's difficult to trust others to do a good job on something YOU'RE going to be getting graded on, but if you try to do it all alone, you'll become overwhelmed and burnt out. Don't do it.

6) I would make my last tip something lame like "Have fun!" but I know that with group projects, that's virtually impossible.