“Get into groups of four or five,” my teacher says as we file into his classroom one by one. A collective sigh fills the room as we all sit down and take our seats, craning our necks to depict who to choose. All around me I watch the pairs begin to form, girls and boys who are best friends, the smart kids, and of course, the slackers. As we scramble to rearrange our desks I end up with the people everyone dreads of getting: the slackers. It is safe to say that group projects would be one of the most dreadful assignments that a teacher could give to students. The work ends up being unevenly distributed, and it is extremely rare to find a group of people who are easy to work with.

One of my biggest pet peeves is being forced to bear other people’s weight when it comes to schoolwork. It is not fair to do group projects because getting paired with people who don’t care is the common result. With that being said, the inclinations of taking on all the work bears down on particular individuals and those students are forced to do the best they can with the efforts they are given from their peers. Furthermore, say the people in your group do care; it is difficult to find time for the project to get completed since everyone in high school has such busy schedules. That ultimately leaves students with two options, sitting back and doing the work knowing no one else will, or taking the zero and giving poor evaluations to their group. In the end, that doesn’t benefit anyone because group projects still continue to be assigned multiple times throughout the year in all of our classes.

Teachers assign group projects to teach us students how to work together efficiently in order to reach a common goal, however it ends up backfiring since the group usually turns into a team of one. My suggestion would be to have teachers assign the portions of the group project to each member so that it could be fair to all. That way, if one person does not pull the same weight their lack of effort will show and affect only their grade.

Everyone has their own way of doing assignments and projects, and based on their preference it coincides with their effort. I prefer to work independently, because the only person I have to rely on is myself, and I know with hard work I can get the work done. I understand that group projects are here to stay, so I will continue to work for my grade in hopes that one-day kids will not have to deal with the annoyance of group projects.