Back in the Junior College (JC) life, doing Project
Work (PW) in groups of five was a special memory for most of the students. Many
teammates developed their friendship after the PW as well. However, PW was not
really a beautiful memory for my group.
At first, things were going very smooth and without
much effort, we submitted our Preliminary Idea to our supervisor successfully.
But later when we needed to dig deeper into our topic and expand the width and
depth of our proposal, we found that a guy in our group, Robert, were often
late for more than half an hour for our meetings. Besides, during our
discussion, he was quiet for most of the time when the rest of us were
brainstorming ideas. In fact, he even fell asleep sometimes during our
discussion. When we asked him for an explanation, he told us that he was the
only one who lived in the east. And the meeting was always held in the west
because the rest of us lived nearby. And he had to wake up very early to attend
the meeting. Despite being a little doubtful that he was only using this as an
excuse, we accepted his explanation.
Unfortunately, this was not the end of the story. As we
moved on to the second half of the year, we found that Robert was making less
contribution to the project than before. He was still very unpunctual for
meeting; he hardly opened his mouth during group discussion; and he even
stopped doing his part of the group proposal. We thought about reporting this
problem to the supervisor, but we were afraid that this would reflect badly to
our group. To finish the project, the four of us had to make up Robert’s part. Our
team went into a mess and none of us received a good grade for PW.
Do you think there’s anything we could have done
better?
Hi Mao Lei,
ReplyDeleteyour story sound similar to Liying's story except that your grades reflected badly while hers turned out fine. I'm really sorry to hear about that.:(
Here's what I think could be done better. Firstly,after your group has suspected that he is giving excuses about the meeting venues and timings, you could have conducted your meetings at a central location, maybe somewhere in town. In that case, if he is still not punctual, then perhaps he is really giving excuses.
Secondly, he is probably facing some family problems like financial difficulties and he has to work at night to help curb with the financial burden of the family. So perhaps, you guys can talk to him and ask him what is happening. Show empathy and concern towards him and if you can, offer your help.
Lastly, if he is still not contributing after all that you have done to help, perhaps you should report the matter to your teacher in charge. People who leech on others' contributions for credit should not be given full credit for things they did not do. It would be unfair to you guys. You should fight for your own rights.
Perhaps in future if such things happen again, you might want to use the above tips. haha. Hope it helps.
Cheers,
Cass :)
Hi Cassandra,
DeleteGreat advice! We could have tried changing the meeting place to somewhere closer to Robert, but I guess we complained about him too much at that time to suit his needs.
As for reporting to the teacher, the rest of the group failed to reach a consensus eventually. Some of us thought we should fight for our rights and some thought reporting may not be the best option since Robert was also our classmate. But looking back to J1 now, I guess you are probably right.
Just another piece of info to share with you, Robert did not have family problems or whatsoever. He was indulged into computer games too much at that time. Didn't do many of his tutorials as well, not to mention PW. Luckily he bucked up in J2 and performed ok in A-levels.
Thanks for replying my blog!
Yours,
Maolei