Social Postures

Tutor: Right now, get into groups of three or four and see what you all think about -insert topic here-

Me: [to myself a la young Anakin Skywalker] NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Let’s get straight to the point. I. Fucking. Hate. Group. Work.

Don’t get me wrong, I love group discussion with the whole class – batting ideas about and generally having a good airing of the issues; I don’t mind group assignments either – that longer-term working with a team thing where you sort out tasks and get on with ‘em can be fun, y’know?

But in-class ‘group work’? -shudder- It REALLY REALLY annoys me.

I’m not sure if I’ve always been like this, or it started during my first ill-fated attempt at undergraduate study during which I studied with a bunch of (mostly) privately educated wannabe-business-leaders.

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A brief aside:

You see, due to a hiccup in history where I went straight on to university rather than taking a much-wanted year out after high school, I ended up studying for a Bachelor of Business at the University of Technology, Sydney mainly cos:

1. It was close to home
2. I thought I could learn something about business so I could get involved in making a new not-profit-obsessed economy
3. It wasn’t Arts at Sydney Uni (which is what sorta wanted to do, but feared that it was too vague and I’d never work out what I wanted to do. Oh the irony. I still have no idea).

So there’s a 17 year old me, from a left-wing progressive high school, suddenly amongst a bunch of kids who, it seemed to me, knew absolutely nothing except that they wanted to spend their lives making money. You can imagine that group work was a frickin’ trial.

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Aaaanyway, I hate group work. I hate that generally nobody else in the group, volunteers to say anything. I hate that after a couple of minutes silence I end up taking a lead and gently coaxing everyone’s ideas out of them. I hate that the girls usually go all coy and pretend to be stupid like they couldn’t possibly have an opinion about anything, I hate those that start going on and on and on about something IRRELEVANT or STUPID and I especially hate that’s it’s so fucking slow working at the group’s collective pace when all I want to do is get to the right answer and get the hell home.

And, of course, this is absolutely stupid and yet another longheld habititual reaction I need to break. Group work is an opportunity to develop conversational and listening skills, to get more comfortable in the ‘enabling’ role if, as it would appear, I’m destined to be in it forever. I must stop focussing on getting correct answers and start getting involved in the process.

Given how deeply I believe that everyone should be encouraged to participate in politics, getting over my own impatience with the reticence of others is a necessary place to start.

And so continueth the lesson…