the BEST?
In a design project, we were allowed to form a team of five on our own. My friend was invited by one of the best students in the class to form a group with three other students all of whom were known for good results they obtained in previous project modules.
After joining in the team, my friend found that her teammates seemed to be too ambitious of the final grade of the project, and were not enjoying the learning process. All of the team members were told to keep their designs in secret and sometimes could lie about them when being asked. She herself, however, felt the grade was not the only important thing and this action would lead the team being isolated from the rest of the class. When she expressed her opinion during one of the project meeting, her teammates thought she was not handling the project seriously as they were. Despite this was just a school project, in their mind, it should still be treated as those we might face in the real workplace where only the best project proposal could win the deal. They could not reach an agreement and after that, my friend found herself being repelled from the team. She was very upset about the situation. However, no matter how hard she tried to get involved in, the tasks assigned to her were never to be core ones. What can she do?
Hi Cangming:
ReplyDeleteThis is a very common situation in NUS where students get very obsessed about their grades and become very competitive in the process. Personally, your friend’s teammates were wrong to judge your friend’s performance based on the fact that she was not as concerned as them about her grade. To solve this problem, your friend could talked to one of them alone to express her concern of being left-out by the group and to request to be more involved in the project. I believe that if one of them could understand your friend’s concern and needs, he or she would be able to persuade the rest of them to involve your friend more. Lastly, I hope that your friend has taken some actions and the situation would have improved for her.
With regards,
Kar Liang
Hey Cangming,
ReplyDeletethis appears to be a case of complete utter elitism! It is very difficult to stay grounded when your have not tasted failure or defeat, and the group of top students have probably gotten carried away the ends than the means. Your friend's opinion was wrongfully rejected just because she did not fit into the dynamics of the team. Had I been her, I would have asked for your and your friends' help to speak up for her. Given that she was the minority in the group, she would need strength in numbers.
Should all of you fail to convince the group otherwise of their extremely pragmatic behaviour, I would raise to the teacher for a change in grouping as continuing on with the group would be detrimental to both her welfare and learning process. This situation shares resemblance with Zhang Jiao's problem, where it was a case of personality clash. There is only a limited extent to which she could accommodate the group member's elitist attitude.
However, should the teacher refuse to allow for a change in grouping, I would tell her to stick to her principles and try to persuade the other group members that a project is as much learning as it is about achieving a good grade. Ultimately, your friend would prove to the others that she had gotten the final grade the way she wanted to: by not fixing her eyes only on the prize.
Warm Regards,
Eric Li
Hey Cangming,
ReplyDeleteIt is coincident that similar situation happened on me yesterday. My friend and I are doing the same project this semester, but we are involved in different teams. We were supposed to submit our project proposals by this Friday. Therefore my team were striving very hard for it that we held project meeting every day in this week. Due to our efforts, our team submitted the proposal one day before the deadline. However, last night my friend came to me and asked for my proposal for his reference. I told him “I cannot give you without my teammates’ permission, and I think it shows no respect to our team as we do the proposal all by ourselves without referring to others’ work”. Then he said why we made our proposal so confidential and then he left angrily. Today, when I saw him again, both of us felt very embarrassed. I felt he was self-initiated and it should be his fault. But it seemed like he was waiting for my apology.
I think such a situation is quite common in universities that every student is competitive and stressed for the grade. However, everyone should understand that exhaustive efforts are put in every single work. We need to respect others’ work and also give understanding to others’ confidentiality. For your situation, I think your friend may suggest to her teammates that they should be confident that they are strong enough to score for A, but the more important thing is to enjoy the process of learning. However, I think it is very difficult to remove the isolation from the majority of the class unless everybody realize to understand others.
One more thing I want to say: the heading of this blog is ambiguous, “the best?” tells me nothing about the blog, although same problem also applies to my blog.
Best regards,
Zhang Jiao
Wow, talk about competition. How frightening but true Cangming.
ReplyDeleteThat's why there should be a first round of presentation in class to hear what each team is doing. Stake your claim to the project; others who hear your ideas can modify of course, but the lecturer should note it was the team's original idea.
However, if the nature of the project is not about the process but the outcome and it has to be a secret, then everyone should be told not to ask each other about it. There is also no need for one to lie.
Regards,
Happy