My Group Work Experiences: Essay You Might Want To Emulate

During my childhood, I wondered why I had to go to school more often. To me, school was a distraction meant to separate me from my family, specifically my mum. However, over the years, through interacting and working with other people I have come to appreciate the thought that I am one of the few privileged in the world to set a foot in school, leave alone college. The most interesting thing about my school life, especially in college is the fact that I have come to see people for who they are. In this reflective essay, I plan to focus on the hitchhikers and couch potatoes in my life, as well as my future plans when working in groups.
After joining the university, I have found myself in more than one occasion working in groups, particularly when doing proposal assignments. In these groups I often meet people of different characters, some whose I would emulate whereas others I wonder how they cope with oneself. In my previous group, I worked with a lady called Mary who was quite hardworking and would often complete her portion of the assignment earlier than expected. In the same group, we had two guys who rarely showed up for meetings.
Jack, one the guys, had excuses almost every other time for not attending the discussion meetings. One day he’s either too sick to come, or busy doing other work. Whenever we share the work amongst ourselves, Jack rarely managed to do his. Most of the time we had to do the work ourselves. At times, Mary and I would do his work before showing up for the meeting probably because we knew he would either fail to show up or come with incomplete work. Indeed, Jack was a true hitchhiker and it affected the performance of our group. On the other hand, Henry was another problem. He was a couch potato who was ever late for the meeting. He was addicted to movies and never completed his portion of the work. Other times he delivered wrongly handled work, forcing us to revisits his assignments.
At first, I used to sympathize with such particular characters by helping them out and doing their work. I was afraid of informing on them and in return Mary and I would suffer. My future is uncertain but am sure that I must not suffer in the hands of hitchhikers and couch potatoes. I would rather have them hate me other than influence them to use me by being lazy. In that regard, I shall report on people of such characters to my professor, be firm in my stand against being used, and include names for the specific people that have contributed in the assigned work.
In addition, I plan to set certain limits when dealing with Henry and Jack of these world. For instance, whenever Jack claimed to be too busy to meet, I should have asked him to either find time or consult with the professor. Also, in case of poorly completed work, I shall let the persons involved know that they have contributed nothing. In future, I plan to make a stand on things that I can and cannot tolerate. By sticking to my guns, I believe that I will manage to handle the hitchhikers and couch potatoes without being used.