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Why hello end-of-the-semester!

You sure did sneak up on me.

I take that back…projects, homework, and additional readings never sneak up on me, because I am just a bit obsessive when it comes to managing my time wisely.

Some people are not so wise. So here I am– I live another semester to pick up the slack.

So now I’m going to tell you all the secret to never getting stuck in a position where you have to do all of the work for your group…

Nominate yourself as team slacker!

Just kidding! What’s the point of paying for your education, if you’re going to try to get away with learning as little as possible? You do remember that you made a decision to go to college and you’re paying for right? I mean…if you don’t want to be in school, you don’t have to be!

The only thing you can do to make your life easier is prepare for catastrophe every time and brace yourself. In my life as an academic over-achiever, I’ve developed a group-project protocol to minimize (note: it’s not always possible to eliminate) stress in desperate times.

1. Take control of the project from the beginning. If your teammates know that you are serious about the project and serious about your grade, they’re more likely to get working right away.
2. Set due dates along the way. Separate your project into phases and set a due date for each phase. Make sure that the due date for the final project is at least a week before the professor’s due date. This gives you time to edit and compensate for any work that did not get done.
3. Find the hard workers in your group and assign everyone a slacker to tend to. Some slackers may give the illusion that they are working on the project. If you don’t check up on them you  may find that the “work” they were doing is unacceptable.
4. Be ready to do someone else’s work. If you want an awesome grade and you’ve got slackers in your group, you’re going to have to pick up the slack. The best way to prepare for this extra work is to make sure that you understand the project as a whole. It’s difficult to do someone else’s part of a project, if you don’t know what the complete project needs to look like.
5. Let your professor know who carried the majority of the burden. Do this without whining and without disclosing too much detail (which may make you seem like a tattle-tale). This may seem like a futile step, but I look at it this way: If the professor does do something about it (e.g. dock the slacker’s grade), the slacker might learn that he can’t always get away with slacking. This may save that slacker’s future group-mates a lot of stress, if he learns his lesson!

I hope you’ve enjoyed my five-step protocol for academic over-achievers working on groups.

(side note: etsy shop is “up” but mostly in the testing phase. I’ve decided not to invest too much energy in it, as my online endeavors (e.g. examiner.com and ehow) are monopolizing most of my spare time.)