Friday, April 17, 2009

Group Projects

Did I ever tell you how much I loath group projects for part-time graduate students? As an undergraduate, I didn't mind them. I lived on or near campus and had little, if any, responsibility outside of paying rent and finding four bucks for a weekend keg party.

Now that I have a family and a job, my days, nights and weekends are filled. I don't have time to spend five hours at campus working on a team project on a Saturday afternoon - as my group-mates are this weekend.

So why do instructors make 30% of your grade a group project and presentation? My guess is the University thinks that students like group projects. Well I don't. I hate them. I'm willing to bet that any part-time student, full-time employee, full-time father, full-time spouse, full-time house-chore-worker agrees with me.

As a note to the University; I just registered for three classes this fall. I only plan on taking one of them. I dropped an email to each instructor asking them to send a sample syllabus. I'm taking the class - no matter it's subject or my interest - that doesn't have a group project. The other two I'm dropping.

Take that bureaucrats.

2 comments:

TSnide said...

Sounds like a smart way to decide which classes to take. I knew one student at Law School who used that very technique to weed out the least desirable classes, although it didn't have anything to do with group projects.

As for your dislike of group projects, similarly, I never got in a study group at Law School. Some professors seemed to think it was forgone that everyone got in study groups, and taught their courses with that in mind. (For example, one professor, when answering a question about certain challenges of an upcoming exam, said words to the effect of, "Well, that's what you'll want to practice with your study group.")

I hardly made any friends in my five years, let alone study partners. Living and working in Eagan, getting married, having kids and starting a new family, didn't exactly mesh with hanging out in St. Paul several hours at a time, and then heading over to Billy's to kill the very brain cells they were just trying to fill with legal knowledge.

bosshart said...

You're really sticking it to The Man, nice work.