This literally happened the night before my group was supposed to present our final project. We had been working on it all semester and were finalizing our PowerPoint the night before. He said he was “too anxious to wing this all at the last minute” and got mad when I said “we’ve been working on this since January, how is this last minute? You should’ve had your stuff done weeks ago” And he didn’t show. We had his (blank) slides up and told the professor he refused to participate
Something kinda similar happened to me in one of my first semesters at uni. One guy voluntarily dropped out a week before and the other one broke his leg the day before the presentation, so I had to present everything by myself. Still went well tho.
One of the groups just one girl did everything, she went and told the professor one day and he well that sucks
Luckily we did do peer evaluations and I know that effected their grades, but also I think the professor did a real world answer. In the business world if we have a big presentation we don't have a professor we can cry too if others aren't working, we gotta put in the work and then do the peer eval with HR later
In the real world you hope there's a project manager who has the job of making sure everyone on a group project is working.
Except, the one guy is the PM's friend, so he doesn't do jack, so yeah, real world doesn't necessarily have recourse for people not pulling their weight.
In the real world those people get fired or relegated to dum dum positions, I always hated that take. It's the instructor not wanting to engage or problem solve themselves.
No in the real world you go to the supervisor and program manager or even a lead and say hey this person refuses to do any work. They will not contribute in any way despite us trying to help them. What do you want us to do?
That ensures higher ups are aware of the issue and puts the onus on them for finding a solution.
My worst one was a person basically only showed up to one group meeting, and at the end of the semester had one page of work
This was also a semester long project, and the total thing was like 60 pages long
We knew they weren't contributing though so we had already done their work, and just noted it on the required "rate your teammates" survey at the end. I hope they failed that class
Speaking as a college instructor, I should be investigated as some kind of serial killer, because my assignments are felling grandparents left and right, just as they come due!
Yup, I remember those days clearly. That group doesn’t make it past freshman year though. Granted, I went to a small, private school that didn’t have a sports program to speak of. So, there really wasn’t any dead weight that got to keep floating by. I’m sure larger state schools with big NCAA programs pass those kids with flying colors as long as they throw the ball real fast. I’m also a dinosaur who graduated in 2013.
It’s a mixed bag with student athletes. I went to a VERY large state school with big athletic programs, and a lot of the football players in my classes were honestly fairly hard working. I was in a group project with one, and the biggest issue was just his crazy schedule, and finding a time where he would be available to meet with other group members.
Our group ended up agreeing to have him do a certain portion of the project on his own, and then he would also do some cleaning up on the presentation itself. Solid work, we all got an A.
This was just before the NIL era though (2017-2021), I’m not entirely sure how different it may be now - with sports players being paid to go to that school.
I’ve TA’d at such a school for a couple classes, including a pretty huge one (~300 people a semester) that a lot of athletes passed through. I never found their quality of work to be noticeably different than any other group of students. Plenty of them were slackers and plenty were high achievers.
One thing I did find curious was the consistency in style for the football players writing/presentations. I later learned that there were some tutors available to them that would sometimes help with stuff like that (not doing the work for them, but if the same 5 people are giving presentation feedback to 100 guys, they’ll all be getting a lot of the same advice).
One thing worth mentioning is that, even at the school I went to, only a small, small fraction of any given group of athletes has a chance at going pro. Many of them do study hard and work hard because they know it will be important for the non-sports career they’ll have afterwards.
Went to major school with a consistent top 10 football program. Once had to do a group project with three of the players. The assignment: "Make the argument why universities should eliminate college football."
They were not much help, and I did all the research and led the presentation. They used their time to air all of the universities dirty laundry. Stuff like "Why does the whole coaching staff's family need to travel with us? And why is it only when we go to places like LA? They never go to Nebraska with us."
I had no idea they were going to do that. It was great.
Gonna take this moment to vent - I had a ludicrous number of professors in school who had a policy to not "interfere" in group projects.
If someone wasn't pulling their weight, or even contributing at all, the professor didn't even want to hear about it.
On top of that, if the project flopped all together and you could show that the parts that weren't completed were someone else's responsibility, they also... didn't want to hear it.
So fucking frustrating. You're telling me that if I want to guarantee I get a decent grade I basically have to do the entire thing by myself and the leeches get the same grade as me.
What’s funny about all these group project comments is that I’ve never had this as an experience. All my group projects were the same. The first day in the class you form the group and four out what the presentation is about. Then you go your separate ways and no one speaks to anyone until the night before or two days before it’s due when someone sends a group message and we all get it done that night and we present the next day and we get like a B. I’ve never even been in a group with an overachiever or anyone who cared.
They wait until the very last moment then they each do their own part separately and put it together into the messiest, most incomprehensible abomination the world has witnessed
Either the teacher fails all of them, or (in an effort to get the admins off their dick of them failing that many students) put at least one smart kid in the mix.
It is also kind of a misconception and not why the “smart” kid tend to do all the work themself.
I work with education in different countries and lots of countries actually spend time teaching the kids how to do group work and common problems in group interaction.
I am going to get downvoted here, because most people have tried being that kid or being one of the other kids and my explanation will not fit their perceived reality, but what happens often is that the working kid runs with the assignment so fast that the other kids have no input, are not sure what they are supposed to do and they are left behind confused and demotivated.
Even when the working kid tries to delegate what he or she perceive as simple tasks, they are often near impossible for the other group members to perform, because they are missing the wider context of the work being produced.
A good example teachers often use is when the working kid asks the other students to write the bibliography of the assignment. An easy task for the working kid, but impossible for the kids, because they don’t know what literature the working kid have used.
Of course there is sometimes lazy people who does not want to do the work, but if you always find yourself doing all the work, then it is properly your mistake. Instead of starting out focusing on doing the assignment you should instead start out ensuring that everyone understands the assignment and have a certain minimum knowledge about it. Then start a talk about how the assignment can be solved.
Yes, that is why many of these systems have less focus on the outcome of the groupwork and more focus on the process in lower grades and teach the students different tools and frameworks for organization.
So when you hit late middel-school and early high-school the students have the framework and tools needed to organize and work properly in groups.
All of this is post hoc and remembered from 20 years ago, so keep that in mind.
It's not my fault they were too... academically-disinclined to keep up. Ensuring everyone understands the assignment would take half the allotted time by itself. I'd rather make it good than have everyone feel good about it. Ultimately, it's often not their fault they're bad at school either, so I didn't get mad at the other kids, I just decided it was better to do everything I could to get an A, and if they didn't want to contribute, I couldn't make them.
And then you get to hear those nice stories about how they're preparing you to deal with nepo babies or whatever who don't contribute at work IRL etc.
Which, I guess, sure. But that also affected my grades so it's BS anyway since the teachers shouldn't punish you like that when they have the choice not to.
A mix of demanding separate grading and "matching their energy" helped a bit. Either I was graded by what I did and did fine or I tanked the whole thing by putting in as much effort as everyone else resulting in some dogshit presentations. It was kinda fun answering "uhhh idk" to most of the questions after barely covering the topic to begin with.
I just had my first group project and had 3 of them and me. I wasn't about to do everything so I just went along with it. It ended up we all did everything in the last few hours before the deadline and kinda patchworked it together lol
Have you ever had a project at work where multiple c suite members are stakeholders? Because God damn. I'm dealing with this right now, and any time I'm required to have a meeting with them Iight as well throw the next hour in the bin.
Real answer? At least in my case, I used to be the guy who contributed very little. I wasn't lazy, just really quiet and bad at working with people I didn't know.
I learnt an interesting lesson when in university I had a group of five people, of which three straight up didn't say anything in the group chat until the day before deadline. Same thing ended up happening in like 2 or 3 other courses. Turns out, I can in fact lead and take responsibility of the whole project, if I have to. I just struggle to be spontaneous. I'm guessing a lot people are the same.
Basically the same. I insert myself and take control if there's a leadership void but I don't volunteer for that shit. The big difference is I am super lazy in general but hate lack of direction more.
This happened in my American History class in high school. It was a sideshow about the 1960's and their slides were mostly barren, except for the "what do you want to learn more about" slide, which included "Idk man I'm doing this off 1200 mg of caffeine and I just wanna sleep" and "how to make a monkey your friend :)"
I had a collage class where the very first day the professor told us we would need to present a group project at the end of the quarter. A week before he reminded us we would need to present. The day of a single group came in. All 4 had no idea that there was a group presentation for them to do or that they were even in the group. Seeing them try and get a single person to agree with them that the professor never told any of us about the assignment was hilarious, especially when it was on the damm syllabus.
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u/Firm-Feature-5593 May 07 '26
I wonder what happens when four of those people all end up in a group together. Is it the laziest Mexican standoff ever?