Group Dynamics: Weaknesses and Strengths

Throughout my educational career, I have always disliked group work. To me, group work is only beneficial to those individuals that normally do poorly on projects and who view the opportunity of working in a group as a chance to improve their own grades at the cost of the other individuals in the group. When working on a project on my own, I strive for perfection by watching every detail closely—from the font on a page to the alignment of sentences on a PowerPoint presentation. But, since I am not my own teacher and because I am not able to assign myself my own homework assignments, I have had to work in groups on many occasions. And although I continue to strive for perfection while working on a group project, this is not always possible—and so to me, completing a group project that does not satisfy my own perfect standards leads to heartbreak each and every single time. Working in a group is not an easy task; it is difficult, it is time-consuming, it is tedious, and it can even lead to restless sleep. In each group, (a) you always have the individual that just can’t find the time to work on the project, (b) the individual that never knows exactly what to do, (c) the individual that can care less because they’re going to end up failing the class anyway, (d) the individual that really cares about the outcome but who doesn’t care how the group reaches that outcome, and (e) the individual who makes everything happen. Because these are individuals that I have had to work with on many occasions, I have taken the liberty of given them titles: (a) The Flake, (b) The Drug Addict, (c) The Idiot, (d) The Paranoid Obsessive-Compulsive Without a Cause, and (e) The Man (or Woman; I really don’t want be sexist). The Flake is the individual who somehow always has to work, has to attend a family function, has to watch the Sport Special, or just has to baby-sit their sibling on the days that the group decides to meet. This individual is rarely seen at group meetings, fails to