I haven’t had much group work experience during my undergrad studies so far. Disregarding lab partner work, there was really only two instances of group work I can think of, and those moments were back in my first year. The first one a group research and presentation (on peroxisomes), and the second instance was just group work in our tutorial (i.e. discussing questions and answers for our worksheets).
This term I have one class that has a major group project/presentation and the syllabus of this class states “If you dislike the idea of group work, please do not take this course”. I’m generally fine with group work, but reading this question made me question whether or not I still wanted to take this course. I think it may be due to my lack of group work experience that makes me afraid of doing group work? So many thoughts flood my brain, so many questions about how I am in group situations, and so many flashbacks to me feeling not smart enough to be in a group…
What if I suck at collaborating and voicing my thoughts? What if I don’t contribute a lot? Will my group members think that they’re carrying me throughout the term? What if they end up actually carrying me throughout this group assignment? What if I fuck up royally during the presentation (which happened in the winter term with my lab course, where I literally could not answer any questions and stumbled so much during my presentation)… what if people direct their questions towards me and I can’t answer them? What if I can’t answer a single question they ask me?
Typing this out, it seems like I am doubting my abilities to work in a group and most of all presentations. I know group projects can be tough and a lot of work, but I can grow and learn from my past mistakes. Who knows, maybe I end up being with a really quiet group and end up carrying people (which I highly doubt in a 4th-year course, but still… you’ll never know).
UPDATE (11/9/2018):
Group work has been okay so far. Both of the groups I’m in didn’t start working on our projects until last week which sucks because I wanted to work on these projects sooner, but it’s okay. For both groups, it’s been pretty good with one group finishing most of the much-needed research and the other group finally planning out our big project.
Noemi’s Corner 