Shoshana Feld-Sobol
Strategic and Corporate Communication (’17)

It seems as though our professors love to have us work in groups. Whether it’s a group presentation, paper, or report, I always find myself in multiple group assignments each semester. Working in groups is not everyone’s cup of tea, and the common complaint is that you will always have people who slack off. I used to hold that same opinion, however, as I’ve continued to work in groups, I find that there are actually some benefits of studying with a group. Check out the positive and negatives below.

Let’s start with the negatives:

  1. People will slack off
  2. People can be distracting when working in a group
  3. You can’t be 100 percent sure that all the people in the group have accurate information about the study material
  4. You could end up doing all the work
  5. Working in a group is time consuming when you might have been more efficient on your own

Positives of working in a group:

  1. More minds working together can equal more productivity
  2. Working with other people means you stay on track
  3. Other people can come with different perspectives and points of view then you have alone
  4. It’s fun to work in a group with your friends
  5. When you work together you can divide and conquer and thus you don’t have to do as much work

Negatives of working alone:

  1. Easy to get distracted
  2. Leaves room for procrastination
  3. Lack of accountability to anyone
  4. If you have misinformation no one will be there to correct it
  5. Very time consuming

Positives of working alone:

  1. You work on your own time
  2. If you are focused you can get a lot done in a short amount of time
  3. You don’t need to depend on anyone to give you information, you have everything you need
  4. You don’t put yourself in a position where you could let someone down
  5. You don’t have to worry about scheduling meeting times, dates, or locations

As you can see, there are many positives and negatives of working with a group verses working alone. Whether you decide to work alone or in a group setting is a very personal decision. I find that I work better alone. However, some of my friends who are more extraverted love working in groups. Your decision might also heavily be dependent on your specific project or assignment. Writing a paper can be hard to collaborate on but studying for an exam can often be beneficial for a group of people putting their heads together. Either way way, good luck! Finals are here!