Teamwork

        What is teamwork?  It is the process of working together with a group of people in order to accomplish a task or acheive a goal.  It is a crucial part of business or school work.  It is often necessary for us to work together as a team in most any environment we are in.  Teamwork is people trying to cooperate with each other cashing in on individual skills and knowledge.
     Teamwork is a tricky thing.  There is usually one or two that just like to come along for the ride and want credit while doing nothing.  I am sure we have all run into those people.  Doesn't make the project easy to do.  For me, especially while in school, I hated group projects.  I would want to change classes if I saw there were group projects.  Why?  Because I have had so many of those people who just want to come along for the ride.  I tend to be a perfectionist and I want things done well and not just on time, but early.
     And the thing that I hate more than anything when it comes to group projects and teamwork is, "I have so much going on in my life I just don't have time." My life is just as busy as the next and perhaps busier than some and when I hear the excuse they just don't have time to do their part, it makes my blood boil.  We all have the same amount of time in every day.  It's just that some people MAKE time to do what they are suppose to do.  I just want to look at those people and say, "walk in my shoes for awhile."  It seems that some of the younger ones say they work or they have kids, well so do most of the rest of us.  It is called priorities and yes, jobs and kids have to be priorities, but they should never be an excuse.
         When I was in college the first time around, I had six children at home and they were all involved in some kind of sports or music, and I worked 30 hours a week while carrying 18 credits, and had three church positions and a husband that was never around.  I never missed any of my childrens activities, books went with me everywhere I went and I would study as I could.  I spent many hours in the ski lodge studying while my family was out on the slopes.  I had gotten to the point that I figured I would sleep after graduation.
         Now I am not telling this for people to think I was a superwoman. I wasn't I was just an ordinary person with lots of things to do.  I was just a person that was organized and made time for each thing in my life that had to be done.  We even had group projects to do in a lot of my upper level classes and this was before the time of social media and the internet, so we had to meet face to face somewhere.  What I am trying to say is that too often people use kids, or work just to get out of doing any work in the project but expect to get the same grade as the ones doing most of the work and that isn't being a part of a team, or teamwork.
        This semester in one of my masters classes we had not only one but two group projects.  My heart sunk when I saw that.  My hands got cold and clammy and my stomach churned, flashbacks from undergraduate times.  I had no choice since it is a required class and bit my tongue and proceeded on with the class.  The class was totally online so I had never even met most of the people I was doing the project with so I really didn't know what kind of team player they would be.
        Time soon came to start the group projects and I braced myself for the worst.  Guess what?  After completing both of the group projects, I found my fear to be unfounded!  I was amazed and very pleased at how these projects went.  Sure there was a few who didn't dare do anything without the consent of the whole group.  I told myself this is where they will learn that they should just tell everyone what they were going to do and do it, no votes, no waiting for anyone else to say yay or nay.  And I did see that growth all through the first project and very little of that through the second project.  Both projects were very successful and were done completely electronically.  We never met face to face at any time.  Through the electronic messaging and google docs as well as others we were all able to work together and make it happen, when we could, as we could.
         I will say that is was a pleasure working with the group on those two projects and this experience has made me dread group projects much less and restored my faith in the real value of teamwork.