I think that if you believe in a Hell it would look something like this. You’d be put into a group with Satan, Hitler and Joseph Stalin and assigned a task that’s due in a week about the difference between amphibians and reptiles.  You’d have to make a poster with your members and you’d be marked individually. Everyone would probably try and lead while you sit there in a pit of fire trying to make up a realistic bibliography fake dates. The stuff of nightmares.

Today I experienced what I’d like to think of as the most preventable and unnecessarily complex issue I’ve ever faced when it comes to group work. We had barely begun our first meeting when tragedy arose. The situation snowballed into a horrid melodramatic debate fuelled by impulsive jabs worthy of a heated episode of Dr. Phil. The meeting ended as quickly as it had begun. If you’re wondering what had caused the chaos it was something very controversial indeed. Yep, it was our meeting place.

-gasp-

Each group member had staggered their arrival into the city and up until this point we had had consistent and reliable contact in our group chat on Facebook. I sent quite an innocent message inquiring where everyone and quickly received a message with someone’s location. I waited with them for more than an hour for the others to arrive assuming they had read the chat. But as it turned out they had been waiting together in the opposite building tempers rising at our tardiness. But we weren’t late we were just blindly waiting for them close by. Apparently they didn’t have any internet to check the chat and had gone by the original meeting spot, not having seen the update.

Of course a group member stormed in, eyes watering with the the sting of betrayal as I retracted in fear.

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”

“H-here…?”

And so the interrogation and accusations began. Never have I longed more for clarity and good communication.

If nothing else, I’ve learned that a steady online connection =a steady team.

an optimistic update 3rd of May ’16

Things seemed to calm down very quickly after we had a quick chat and decided to not let history repeat itself. Group project: today was astronomically better in terms of work distribution, idea sharing and general progress. We all arrived on time and got started very quickly. We had a list of things to do and we checked them off as we went. A group member brought along a friend to play devils advocate and randomly throw questions at us to help us full proof our idea.