Ah, was that the mullet you tried to play off as intentional?

That haircut needed its own bright green tracksuit.

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Originally posted by Happymess "And who's that?" "I don't know. He sent me a friend request, so I tattooed his face on my body."

If i was her friend on fb and knew she did this i woudl intentionally defriend her just to piss her off and make her tattoo non-factual

My dog is turning into the most expensive shelter dog of all time. She was a 10 month old Siberian Husky when I got her last september. The adoption fee was $100. Since then, she swallowed an acorn which was blocking the path from her stomach to her intestines, which required surgery for $3,500. This morning she threw up but then acted fairly normal. I came home at lunch to check on her and found vomit fucking everywhere so I took her to the vet and she apparently has some kind of bacterial infection somewhere in her GI tract. The emergency vet visit + X rays + ultrasound + medication was $800. Bitch.

Weeeeeee! Just booked a 4 day Algonquin canoe trip! Fuck I can't wait!

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Originally posted by Fledz You can't avoid subjects. Most of postgrad is group work anyway, because people in the work force are expected to work with others productively. It's an essential skill in almost any job.

sounds like its just your course man... sucks to be in your industry My course was made of electives, so I could avoid any subjects i didn't like, and now i'm in post-grad field its all individual!
I did have some group stuff, but I would just say to the teacher that I would prefer to do it by myself, and it was usually alright. If not, I would just take control of the group, segment the assignment and make sure the others new exactly what they were meant to do, then not talk to them again till they finished it...

but yes, as i said earlier, i know why they do it, but i also know its completely unrealistic and stupid. Have you ever had to complete the type of group assignment they alot you in uni at your workplace?

I think it depends on the kind of work you do/what industry you're in. Many careers require a certain level of team work and collaboration. Obviously the goals in the workplace are different from what you would be assigned in university, but the basic principles of partnering with other people, self-directed problem solving, conflict resolution, etc., remain the same.

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Originally posted by Miss Pie I think it depends on the kind of work you do/what industry you're in. Many careers require a certain level of team work and collaboration.

I think they all do to an extent, but the question is: What type, and how realistic is the uni assignment compared to the workforce assignment? I doubt anyone would say that uni assignments are representative of the workforce. Working in a workforce comes from experience, you're not gonna pick it up over a piece of crap uni presentation or something

Of course it's not, for fuck's sake. Only a fucking moron would miss the point of group work entirely in such a manner. The goal of university is to teach you about your chosen field of study - so naturally the assignments are meant to make you research and synthesize knowledge on a particular topic. But the underlying goal is to learn all of those other, vital, real world skills.

Like honestly, if a person is too fucking stupid to make it happen in a group, I think it's actually a pretty good barometer by which to measure their professional and interpersonal skills.

If people are so goddamn smart, and group work is such balls - it really shouldn't be a challenge, should it?

quote:

Originally posted by Miss Pie Like honestly, if a person is too fucking stupid to make it happen in a group, I think it's actually a pretty good barometer by which to measure their professional and interpersonal skills. If people are so goddamn smart, and group work is such balls - it really shouldn't be a challenge, should it?

Thats such BS. I think anyone who has worked in group situations have had experiences where some members easily excel but are dragged down by others in the group. Basing a single persons ability on how a group performs is irresponsible.

That is one of the reasons, at least for school things, I always preferred to work solo. Even if I ended up taking on more work myself I at least knew where all the skill levels were for each task, because I was doing all of them. I didn't have to make concessions for people who performed at different levels than myself.

In work situations, I do not mind groups though, but that is usually because, at least in the fields I have worked in, people tend to all be closer in skill level variations, and you have standards and practices to follow on projects.

I knew a guy in school who was ridiculously smart. Like, holy shit he could code things that would take me and other people 20+ hours in less than half that time, but he was a gigantic asshole. He had one of the most negative attitudes I've ever seen on anyone, basically spiteful towards everyone.

Anyways, I wasn't really friends with him, but I was in several of his classes and had seen him around, so when we had to organize a group for a class me and some friends of mine decided he'd be a great addition since he was so strong with computer science.

What a horrible decision. The kid was so dramatic that he eventually stopped coming to meetings, and stopped responding to emails that we'd send declaring when the group was meeting. He was impossible to communicate with. Instead of trying to help the group in the direction we needed to go for our project to actually work, he'd just continually berate people in group meetings for ideas he deemed "stupid". He built up this idea in his head near the end of the semester that everyone in the group hated him (which at that point, was probably true) which just reinforced his isolation from us. I found out from a guy I worked in a group with the next semester who was friends with him that he'd basically told people he knew that it was all our fault since we hated him and stopped telling him when we were meeting.

He ended up doing literally nothing for the project, contributed nothing during presentations, and just really brought the group down with his attitude. I know that he's interviewed with several bigger companies like Microsoft, Google, etc, but he has yet to get any offers. I'm sure the reason for this is that in interviews he just comes off like a gigantic twat.

University work may not equate to workplace work, but the principles of interaction, communication, and teamwork are relatively the same. If you can't fucking function in school you wont be able to in a workplace, no matter how smart you are.