Group Work.

On an academic note (lots of academics recently), I have been reminded this semester how much I dislike group work. Not working in a group. Group Work. That ambiguous institution that bad teachers tend to overuse. Work groups are rarely organized enough to split the work and maximize their "potential." Instead, all that potential sits in a big heap in the library (..shiver..) doing nothing but wasting time. Then, the night before the presentation everyone agrees that BS is the only way the group will survive. And that is exactly what they spout all over the class the next morning. Lies, empty arguments, and poorly contrived conclusions. In this way group-work teachers (you know the type) are basically setting themselves up to get an earful of nothing when they assign a project or presentation.

 

It's not that I mind handing in poor work, especially if I can reason it out (if what I was doing instead of performing quality work was more valuable to me than the grade I received for the poor work), but when it comes to group-work, quality is not the issue. If you have any trace of ethics (which I generally like to believe I have) you feel a bit tied into spending the necessary time working with the group so that you're not the fellow that causes everyone to lose face and gradepoints for poor performance. Not only is it an obligatory expenditure of otherwise useful time; it's a LARGE obligatory expenditure of time. Teachers who like group-work usually don't care to make assignments intelligeble which means  you spend time puzzling over what in the world the prof was thinking when she decided the work was a idea and it may take hours to just get a hadle on what you have to do. My Mexican Business teacher is no exception--she seems to take pleasure in doling out shapeless, onerous assignments that fall upon you like a huge blob of jelly mixed with shaving cream. Impossible to separate and impossible to work into anything remotely pretty, much less tasteful.

 

So there we sat yesterday, my group and I, reading incomprehensible, inapplicable Mexican labor laws, learning nothing except that we'd never be lawyers. A rich Mexican kid in our group didn't show up, which in retrospect was probably good seeing as every time he opens his mouth I want to knock him unconscious (and buy him a bigger bag than the Louis Vutton man-purse that he brings to class). The only reason we had anything like a presentation at the end of three very long hours was Joel, another Mexican guy. DJ by night and trendy electro-intellectual by day, he was the only one who could understand the law enough to make the things he was making up sound remotely correct.

 

This being the 6th such group project/presentation of the semester, I've now decided that I could probably learn more by sitting at home studying the inside of avocado peels than I do in that class. 

But hey, I mean, I like all my other classes. It's healthy to have a class that I can abhor. That way I don't become enamored with this whole school thing…not that there's any real danger. Nobody be alarmed.

 

In other news, I think I'm going to have to give in and trim the ol' mustache finally. It's growing down over both my lips. That makes eating and drinking slightly difficult.  And given how much I enjoy eating and drinking, I just cannot afford to keep it this long. Also, as evident in this recent picture, it gives me more than a slight resemblence to a chipmunk.