Group Project Vent Thread!

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It's Friday night and I am so pi**ed off I can't even enjoy the night. I need to vent so that I can let this go and relax for the rest of the weekend.

Well, enjoy it as much as I can considering all the work I have to get done.

Feel free to vent with me.

:angryfire I hate slackers! I have to vent because I am so annoyed!!!! I am stuck with an assigned group, we have to do weekly group presentations and we are stuck with each other until the end of the semester.

I am already extremely tired of two of our groups memebers who expect to have their hands held every step of the way. Today as we were in the library doing a dry run for Monday the usual suspects had done nothing and expected me to help them! I was so mad :angryfire I had already given one some notes I had written because my part in the presentation changed and I no longer needed the research. I had reservations about doing it because I know how lazy she is and she already flaked on one of our meetings but I decided to just go ahead and not be a hard a**. She had no work done other than the notes I gave her and then had the nerve to ask me to clarify them for her! I asked her if she had read our textbooks because if she had she would have understood them just fine, of course she didn't read the book.

The other woman was claiming that she was so confused about the project and was whining about how we changed her part on her. This was so not true! First of all, all of us were focusing on the wrong thing and we all had to revise our part of the presentation. Second, she was there when we were doing it and agreed to take the part she took! Finally, I told her to call me during the week if she needed help and she never called me. So why is it that on Friday (when the draft was due) we are sitting in the library and she has the nerve to claim that the entire group gave her the shaft and how we all had to help her find stuff for her presentation. It got to the ridiculous point where she was sitting across from me and actually had the nerve to say "Tell me what I should write because I just don't know, I don't understand what we are supposed to be doing here." So I kept explaining it to her and said, if it were up to me I would write about....

She cut me off and said, NO! you are telling me what to say, I want u to tell me what to write! I was floored. I was pissed. I just started staring at her, I was so mad! Well another group member intervened because I was livid.

I am done, I am not helping anymore lazy people out. I am married and have children to take care of and going to school is a huge sacrifice on my famiy's part. I have enough to do just trying to keep up with my own work and if I can manage, then they can get off of their a**es and work just as hard as I do.

These same two group members always want help with the work or want to copy work from the three of us that work together but never have anything to offer.

It's like the old saying: You give an inch and they want a yard.

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...sounds pretty frustrating. Would it be possible to assign those group members "mini" tasks one by one? You shouldn't have to, but maybe they'll manage to get a little something done. Maybe you could even make it a point to call them regularly for a progress report when you have a group project due. Again, you shouldn't have to, but...

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Welcome to nursing, there are these same slackers who you will end up working with. Extemely annoying people...

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TS, Ugh, I don't like that solution at all. You know how nursing school is, I barely have enough time to do my own work much less take on half of our groups work.

GD, I wish I could be in denial but but since this is my second career I totally believe because I have encountered slackers every where I have ever worked. I was just shocked at how bold these particular two are. I mean she straight came out and told me to write her presentation and tried to hand me the pen and paper to get started. Now that is just ridiculous.

Anyhow, after I vented, I showered and watched some T.V. I woke up 100% refreshed and feel much better.

I got a plan for next week and it does not entail doing their work!

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Specializes in Trauma.

I personally HATE group projects. Your grade sort of hangs in the balance of the whole project which is completely unfair. I know what you're going through. All I can suggest is talking to your professor about how she will be grading. Normally, in my case. Each student is graded individually on what they gave to the project and then the group is graded as a whole based on presentation and how they synthesize the material. Maybe trying to turn the situation around by letting them know that each person is graded BOTH individually and as a group, that might change their behavior? Or, just go to the professor about it and maybe she will send out a mass email to the class saying that each person is responsible for their part and that is that? I really don't know how to handle those things. I hate them though and thank God i have my group already planned out for my final semester starting on Monday. Good luck to you.

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Specializes in Cardiac Care.

I feel your frustration.

Nothing in school is worse than doing your best on a group project and finding yourself somehow alone in that. There are always going to be people who want to ride on your coattails and take credit for relatively no effort. I'm sorry this is happening to you, and I truly understand how you feel. In the past, I've had to get right in peoples' faces to get their attention about their responsibilities.

I'm encouraged to read that you've developed a solution that will work for you. Please post how it works. And good luck to you!

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you ae in a bad situation...some people are leeches and if you do something for them once they consider you duty bound to continue

i know that you are 'stuck' with them for now but if you can sumit your part separate...at least once they will see that they will have to pull their share of the load

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Yep...I hear you....I started a thread about the annoyance of these things when I got my syllabus for Community nursing..and it ran 5 pages!

I just finished community and OF COURSE the group project was YET ANOTHER example of 1 slacker being pulled by the others.

I was group leader and I knew this chick had a reputation for being a slacker so I gave her the simplest of tasks...ALL she had to do was contact the Health Dept. in our county to find out about their outreach programs for CO poisoning prevention.

We had 3 weeks to do it. Week one went by and everyone did their stuff except her. So, I reminded her she needed to call and get me that information. Every few days I had to call her up and ask her if she had done it yet. Asked her if she had time constraints or any barriers that were keeping her from getting it done..she said no. We set a deadline for it and she didn't have it in .Finally had to put my foot down and tell her that I needed the information in 24 hours and should she fail to supply us with it I would have to do it myself and let he instructor know she did NOTHING.

Well, guess what occured. She did NOTHING.

We all had to fill out forms in the end stating how we felt the others contributed to the project. The other 2 members and myself all filled out the form and were honest that she did NOTHING. When we decided to set a date to get together to do the powerpoints..she never showed up. When we set a date for final completion and bibliography drafting...again she never showed up.

So we got a 99 and guess what....so did she. The instructor never asked us about our reports or anything. So that's 3 students who worked their tail ends off for A's and 1 complete useless slacker who got a 99 as well.

Fair? Nope. But, what can ya do. I HATE THESE THINGS

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Geri, Ortho, Telemetry, Psych.

Your first lesson in delegating. Good luck. You will be doing this for the rest of your career.:smokin:

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Things have gotten a lot better with the group. It's not going great but I stuck to my guns and didn't allow the two slackers to use me like they did during the first presentation.

I made sure to find out how we are going to be graded and since we are being graded individually and collaboratively I decided to let them fall on their face just once in front of the entire class so that they could learn a lesson. It all went down just as I knew it would and our professor is a screamer so it was very unpleasant for the two who were not prepared. The next day I got another group member to call a meeting and we got the other group members to apply pressure. One of the two decided that it was in her best interest to do the work and has improved a lot. The other one hasn't changed one iota and is still extremely flaky and unreliable; she is also in danger of being dropped because of poor performance in all of her classes.

However, we now have a new problem member (who is also in danger of being dropped) who seemed promising in the beginning but has turned out to be full of hot air. She tries to get away with using Wikipedia and the text book as her sources :nono: and she also has issues with properly citing her work. Instead of me taking her issues on all by myself the entire group has gotten involved and we meet to edit the paper we have to turn in collaboratively. So we catch a lot of her nonsense before it goes to the professor which saves all of our butts.

Again it's not an ideal situation and I still hate group work but at least I got everyone working together and I don't have to do everything.

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this may sound nieve, but I must ask. I am starting in April. Is there alot of group projects. I would hate to have my grade based on what others may or may not take serious. I am extremely excited and serious about my new nursing career and education. what if you do get stuck with "slackers" and they affect your grade causing you to fail and you deserve to pass. Doesn't that mean that you would be allowing these other classmates to affect your future/or some of your grades could be in their hands. I am wondering about this because I hear the fail rate can be high and I plan on working my butt off to pass.

I took cpr today, a pre-req to starting, and there were some classmates there, and you could almost tell right from the get go who was serious and who wasn't. I was very surprised.

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Group projects increased as we went along in my nrsg program. This thread describes my experiences almost to a "T". I grew to hate each project. Can not describe any positive learning experiences from any of these, besides the big lesson described here. There are always one or more people who will do nothing if allowed, and will take credit for the work that does get done. I can not stand lazy people. I could not stand lazy people before these projects, during the projects, and can not stand lazy people today. You have to develop a strategy, like the OP said, and keep with your strategy concerning these slackers, otherwise they will poison the entire process.

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