Studying

I always knew that not everyone saw the world the same way I did, but I at least thought that they would see when they are bothering someone and so would stop doing what is bothering the individual! It is interesting how little and how much we 'see' of others. Typically it is considered polite and considerate to not cause noise when people around you are studying. The same goes for not interupting when another individual is talking and talking louder when told that you have problems hearing and thus can't hear them. But maybe this is just my own views. For a little bit of case analysis, here are two situations that happened today. As background, I had to take a biochemistry test today (which I just failed) so I needed some serious study time.

I started out studying at home, I had everything set up in the front room and was studying with the music to schindler's list playing very softly in the background. My roommate comes home, immediately kills my music and then leaves the room (yes, she did see that I was there). I thought about it and decided that maybe she was having a rough day, so I picked up my stuff and go to my own room so as not to disturb her. I set up once again and put on some light music in the background. Then another roommate comes home and she and the other one start yacking away in the kitchen and hotting and hollering cause of something or another. Considering this is there home too, I decided it would be best if I just went somewhere else, but still they both knew I had a big test, and the first knew I was home studying, why didn't she keep it quiet and inform the 2nd roomie that I was home.

Well, I moved up to the study room in the religion building. More than any other study place, this one tends to be really quiet (even than the library), so I set up camp and started studying. Well, the girl in the table next to mine brings out her lunch. Normally that would be ok, unless that lunch would be a huge bag of carrots and an apple. So for the next 10 minutes all you heard was crunching soudns that were driving me up the wall. Well, then her boyfriend comes in and they start talking for the next 30 minutes or so. By this point everyone in the room is occaisionally glaring at them in hopes they'll realize they are disturbing us and so will leave. Of course they don't realize this. So, everytime they stop talking I would sigh real loudly. That didn't work, so everytime they started talking, I would hum. What was funny was that they then asked me to stop humming cause I was disturbing them. Is that an oxymoron or what. (but plus, what I did was one also) Finally they left after the boy realized he needed to take his test. Never mind the fact that as he was leaving everyone in the room was glaring at him. Did these people just not realize what was going on around them.

I guess politeness is just a lost art these days. I sure don't remember being taught it in grade school. I probably learned from the church, my parents, or just being aware of my surroundings and realizing that some things aren't good to do and some things are. Now don't get me wrong, I am not at all the perfect polite person I wish I was; I interrupt people, I glare at people, I do tons of things that aren't polite, I guess the polite things that I tend to follow most often are those that bug me the most, like disturbing someone who is studying. That is a big no-no in my book, manly cause it takes me forever to get into the mode of studying that I hate being distrubed and thus have to restart. I don't know. I just wish that we focused more on the olden time values that our parents learned, like politeness, and admitting when it was your fault alone when something happens (like that lady with the hot coffee who spilled it and sued McDonalds cause it was hot).

Anyways, be aware of the people around you. Don't always focus on you and thus never see the problems others might have.

Group Work

For starters, I absolutely hate group work. In my experience there is normally one individual in the group that cares the most and so they do all the work, and then the others reap the benefit off that one person. If that doesn't happen, then either nobody does the work, thinking everyone else will, or the group is so disorganized thus the work never gets done. I know there are good points about group work, but do they outweigh the negative effects of it enough for it to be useful.

For starters, you have to work with people and thus have to deal with many different personalities. This allows you to see what many people are like and a little bit on how to handle them so that it is easier in the future. Also, it gives you communication skills. In a group there is typically some sort of project that has to be developed. In order to do the project, most groups split up the work, thus no one has a really big load and it can get done in time. Also, by splitting it up, you learn how to depend on people that sometimes you normally wouldn't depend on in hopes that they would finish their part. Also, it pushes you and your teammates to do their best so that you wouldn't be considered a slacker and wouldn't be considered stupid. Then when the project is done, most groups have developed friendships with the others in their group thus allowing people to be friends that normally wouldn't even acknowledge each other. These are all good points, and they work in theory. But this never happens in real life (or at least not in my life).

Typically, the group is put together by the teacher or the manager, and sometimes it is random, but more often than not there is a purpose to their ordering. Sometimes the ordering is set so everyone will help each other, but from what I've seen it is typically to put more experienced with less experienced, the smart with the stupid, or the troublemakers with people who will do the work for them so that the troublemakers won't return the next year (this mainly happens in school). With these types of groups you typically get problems with people getting along. The more experienced gets aggravated with the less experienced. The smart has to spend the entire time bringing the stupid up to a point where they understand what is going on and thus never get to what they were supposed to do in the first place. The troublemaker makes that entire group angry and thus they will never agree on anything and will never get anything done. In most of these situations, what ends up happening is the person who cares most that the project gets done will do it themselves, or come out as the leader, delegate everything, but still do it themselves in case the group members forget or don't do it at all.

So, choosing groups in that manner is out. If you put everyone at the same level in the same group, then no one will excel above their level because there is nothing to learn from people who are just like you. Choosing groups at random have the same effects as the other two ways of choosing. That leaves having the groups choose themselves. This too can turn nasty. The cliques will of course try to stay together and so will spend most of their time talking about the current gossip. Once the cliques form all that is left is the loners which are normally the extremes of every type of people: the smart, the stupid, the trouble makers, the shy, the weird, the lazy, the angry at the world, the religious. These people either form a group of their own or are parsed off to the clique-formed groups. Now you have an entire group of people who know each other and one who sticks out like a sore thumb. That sore thumb might be ignored, included, or more often than not teased and made fun of. That does little for their self esteem, and because every group is doing it to their individual misfit, the teacher can't keep an eye on all the groups and so it will continue to happen till something occurs that dramatically changes the current standings. This could be anything from ignoring them, to deciding that life is not worth living. If nothing happens to stop the rest of the group, then the bullies will then think that this is fun and do it again, and when they are never stopped, they begin to think that that is a way of life and it is ok. They come up with some sort of excuse to explain how something like bullying is ok (it builds character, tradition, they deserve it for not being normal, we can't be punished for it). They then live up to that for the rest of their life until something causes them to change. So, now we not only destroyed the life of the misfit, but we now destroyed the integrity of the rest of the group and all other misfits that the group will come in contact with.

So, is group work worth the effort? It teaches good values if it works, but inadvertently teaches bad ones if it doesn't. Personally, I never want to do group work again unless it is a bunch of people like me and it is only being done that way cause there is not enough equipment or to much work for one person. Unfortunately, I know my wish will never come to pass, because, believe it or not, a company is just a large group and so when you go out into the work force, you will just be joining a rather large group with smaller groups integrated into it. According to some, that is why we have group work in school, to prepare us for working out in the world. Well, if that is so, than all it has taught me is no one is to be trusted, the boss hates you, the project doesn't matter anyways, and the majority of your fellow employees would like nothing better than to tease and ridicule you and will do so at every opportunity. To bad this will never change, for it is an endless cycle for everyone because once one group goes bad everyone in that group is corrupted as to how group work should be done, and will thus corrupt everyone else they will ever come in contact with inside or outside of a group.