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Group Work or Deadweight?

By Muriel Palanca



I loathe group work! I am contemptuous of group work!

I have an intense dislike sitting at my desk trying to repress a scream while other indolent people, dry of motivation, just sit there looking at me quizzically.

I hope that they physically evaporate, as their intellect has, because their initiative, drive, or need to do well has left them on an earlier train to the middle of nowhere.

I feel maltreated and abused because I have to do all the work since I’m the only one who even bothered to read the assignment of the night before.

I am the one who has to answer all the questions while my “group-mates” wait for me to finish. Of course asking them to crack open a mystical object called a textbook is out of the question.

I would much rather that they sit there and daydream about getting a higher IQ than a stop sign because that is much more productive than rotting away what little intelligence they already have.

I am not absolutely tentative about tilting their heads to the side with a futile hope that gray cerebrum somehow leaks from an opening in their heads.

Instead I sit at my desk and answer the questions with a smile on my face. If they only knew that my smile was an indicator of how much I wanted to shove my paper down their ungrateful throats.

This existing state of affairs should be denounced as it is harder to distinguish whether this is a pursuit of higher learning or whether it is just simple penance.

I wonder how Atlas felt with the weight of the world on his back.

I am feeling indignant at the thought that they are getting A’s off of my work.

I am beginning to have a vague understanding of how a water buffalo, pulling a plow in a rice paddy, feels.

Though my blood pressure is skyrocketing higher than it should, I will not assail anyone because I don’t want the words “mental case” on my permanent record.

I do hope that my future group mates know that if they do not do their part in the assignment, my wrath will be so fierce, it will be biblical.