How Do You Mange Group Projects in College?

00:00:00.000 | We have a question here from groupmate.

00:00:08.180 | Groupmate asks, how do you effectively manage group projects in college?

00:00:15.300 | You don't, you know, groupmate, group projects in college are pretty

00:00:23.300 | hit or miss, usually pretty bad.

00:00:25.060 | You elaborate here that because you're a Cal Newport type, you

00:00:29.620 | are organized and therefore you basically end up doing a lot more

00:00:32.420 | work because you're not on board with the typical college strategy of,

00:00:37.180 | Hey, this is due tomorrow.

00:00:38.680 | Why don't we stay up all night and do something kind of crappy.

00:00:41.800 | You actually want to plan your workout in advance.

00:00:43.720 | And so you end up doing most of the work.

00:00:45.180 | That is the price you pay to have your act together in college.

00:00:49.660 | You're not going to love group work.

00:00:51.740 | The only two pieces of advice I can give is a avoid it when you can, because

00:00:58.260 | it's not going to go well for you.

00:01:00.160 | B, work with the very best people you can.

00:01:02.280 | I mean, I remember having this experience as an undergraduate computer science

00:01:06.940 | student with problem set groups, and I was good at computer science.

00:01:14.140 | I'll put this the humble way.

00:01:15.380 | I was good at computer sciences, as you might've predicted based

00:01:18.560 | on my later career trajectory.

00:01:19.720 | I learned pretty quickly that there was a lot of people who wanted to be in

00:01:24.200 | problem set groups with me because they would get all the right answers.

00:01:29.840 | It wasn't very useful to me though.

00:01:31.640 | Right.

00:01:31.840 | I would basically just do the work.

00:01:33.380 | And eventually I found one or two students who were really smart.

00:01:36.900 | And these were the students I would come back to, to work with again and again.

00:01:40.400 | And we complimented each other and it made these problem set groups really effective.

00:01:44.000 | I actually got a note like a year or two ago.

00:01:47.720 | It was actually pretty cool.

00:01:48.620 | I'd forgotten about it, but it was a group mate I worked with in a lot of courses.

00:01:52.320 | I really liked working with, and he came across on my writing or something recently.

00:01:56.780 | So this is, you know, 15, 16 years later.

00:01:59.860 | And he sent me a note about, Hey, I remember working on problem

00:02:02.300 | sets with you back at, back at college.

00:02:03.760 | So that was pretty cool.

00:02:04.520 | Um, and, but that was really useful.

00:02:06.080 | So pick the smartest people, the most organized people you can, when you

00:02:10.360 | can avoid group projects when you can't.

00:02:13.080 | And when all that else fails, I'm just going to validate your frustration.

00:02:16.880 | I'm not a big fan of group projects in college.

00:02:19.000 | And so you're not doing anything wrong.

00:02:21.320 | It's just kind of the price you pay.

00:02:23.560 | Yeah.

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How Do You Mange Group Projects in College?

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