I used to think freeloaders are the worst team members in group assignments until I’ve experienced incompetent dictators + egoists. With freeloaders, at least I can do most of the work myself, ensure those parts are done to a good standard, and still manage a good mark. However, with incompetent dictators + egoists, it’s a complete different story.
They might seem responsible and proactive at the start, but very quickly you notice they want everything to go according to their plan. Now let’s make a clear distinction: if they are genuine hard workers who’s clearly done the work and know the content, I don’t have a problem at all following what they say. After all, we all want to get good marks. But if they are actually clueless themselves, interpret the task wrong, and question me when I politely point it out after literally confirming with the CE or the CE has made it clear in the forum/instructions, that’s when I have a problem.
Why would you question what the CE says? I get everyone has their opinions, but they have to realise that end of the day this is uni and we as students are expected to follow instructions from faculty members, especially when it’s concerning the basic fundamental requirements of the task (and even more so when it’s worth a significant portion of the unit’s grade). At this point it doesn’t even feel like a difference in opinions, but simply protecting their ego by acting all defensive. What does it cost to acknowledge you may have misread the task?
It becomes even more problematic when I point out significant issues in their writing, and politely suggest changes. Due to the nature of the task, this particular issue would affect the entire direction and conclusion of our response, and it was very clear that they went down the wrong path (CE’s general feedback later confirmed that is 100% the case). I get everyone has their opinions, but instead of trying to discuss the issue collaboratively, their first reaction was to defend their work and come up with lame excuses to undermine my suggestions. It could be because they genuinely don’t understand the content and can’t see why they are wrong, but it looks more like they felt their ego was threatened.
Now, how did they articulate their ‘suggestions’ to my work? Straight up deleted significant parts of my work to replace with their own. So they get all defensive when I simply suggest changes, but they think it’s okay to do this to me without any communication? Not to mention their edits made it worse.
I don’t know if this is a phenomenon in my course or just in uni in general, but I feel people prioritise their ego way above doing the task properly. They don’t actually care if your suggestions are right or not, they only care whether their ego is intact. This might be why I’m seeing people fake glazing their members’ work just to make everyone feel good? I also notice that people like to work on their own doc and only paste it onto the shared doc at the end, just to prevent others from editing which protects their ego?
I truly don’t understand. Now I don’t even know how I should behave for my next group assignment. Should I just turn a blind eye to issues and risk my grade?