Team Projects

Team projects aren't my favorite part of school. I'm intimidated when I hear that they will be assigned as I know they will require hard work. This is because I have had a lot of bad experiences with team projects, but I have also had a few good experiences with team projects. I know that team projects were designed to a be a good and enjoyable experience, but that doesn't always good. I like team projects because it is easier to get the work done when it is spread across members who can focus on areas that they are good at, instead of one person trying to do everything. This goes hand in hand with something I dislike about team projects. Some members, especially in high school and early college, didn't want to do their part of the work. They figured someone else would do it, so they didn't care. This means that the sharing the workload doesn't happen and one or two people end up doing the bulk of the work. Another thing I like about team projects are they allow for collaboration of ideas and can call on different experiences that members have had. This also brings up something I dislike, which is with so many different ideas it can be hard to make decisions. You have to work together and can't let everyone get their own way, which can be tricky. I like that team projects have become easier with technology. It is much easier to collaborate on things like Google docs without having to email copies back and forth or be in the same room. This technology aspect has helped me put more trust in team members. If I can see what they have been working on and doing there part, I don't worry as much about the final project. The biggest dislike I have for team projects is that I can't make sure everything is perfect. When I my own work, I'm very critical and fix it until it's the best it can be. This is very hard to do in a group because you don't want to the members to think you don't like what they did, but at the same time I want a good grade. It can be a very tricky situation for a perfectionist like me. The best experiences I have had is when there are a couple perfectionists in the group and we all critiqued each other, which made for a better team and better result. Both a like and dislike of team projects are the mix of personalities and hidden agendas in the group, it can make a big difference on either it will be successful or not.