Group work can sometimes come across as frustrating and unfair due to the fact that people tend to take advantage of this opportunity and not do work. This then creates a opportunity for people to slack off or not contribute to the assignments. As I read through the syllabus at the beginning of the semester, these were my exact thoughts. I was not looking forward to all the group work that was being assigned. Usually, when I would get group assignments, I would tend to push most of the weight with maybe another person. This was very frustrating at the time. Even when told that the other people in the group did not contribute, the professors usually did not care enough to do anything. In some incidents the professor would do something but it would just be a slap on the wrist. This caused me a lot of stress and anxiety when it came to group work.
Before coming here to Geneseo, I used to attend another college called The City College of New York. Although this was a great school academic wise, some students still did not want to put in any effort. They would either just come in for important dates or just come to class for the exams. This was the schools only downfall. Depending on the classes I took, we would usually get assigned to do group work all the time. Most of the time I would be in a group with friends, and we would get the work done. Other times we had a random selection which was a pain to deal with because most of the time I would get paired up with the so-called “slackers” of the class. This resulted in them putting minimal effort and me doing most of the work due to the fact I did not want to receive a bad grade.
After coming to this class, I learned that this was not the case here. In class, we would typically get randomly assigned to groups by counting to 3 or 4. In these groups, our conversations would usually be about the books/assignments we read or a given topic that Professor McCoy gave us. If it were a specific question, we would all give our opinion on it and then go from there which led us to go into a more in-depth conversation. When we get assigned group work, everyone puts in the same amount of effort; always going above and beyond. I was astonished at this and have never experienced such a fantastic class experience. All of us contributed to the assignment that was given and never left anyone out. Everyone as a group would also be inputting their own ideas into other people’s works and thoughts, which made me think and also made my ideas stronger and more unpacked. This was very new to me as I previously did not have great experiences with group work previously.
In one of the classes, we read I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett. We were then told to discuss our readings, and every group talked about a different topic that related to the book. My group specifically spoke about the importance of the characters and how Ted Turner was not exactly the same as the actual Ted Turner in real life. We then went into a whole conversation on what impact he had on Not Sidney’s life and what it meant. The question came up about how even though Not Sidney was apart of Ted Turner’s life were they really family? My answer to this was no, they were not family as they can not due to blood relation, but they do have a special relationship with each other almost like a mentor and student. After talking about this, someone added that even though Not Sidney lived in his house, they were never really a family. It was almost as if they were tenants who knew each other. As a group when then unpacked more and we then ran out of time to talk as we were so intrigued by this conversation.
Another time we talked about Re: F Gestures and the uniqueness of the structures of the poems and how he plays with the wording. Towards the ending in the section called Logic, he has a poem called 6. The poem goes: “Seven men can be obliterated, burned or hanged or drowned in a lake and forgotten. Men gone, but not seven. Seven men lost, but not seven. Seven is, will be. All men will die but not seven.” In this poem, Everett talks about seven men that end up dying. He says that the: “Men gone, but not the seven.” This means that the seven itself does not die only the men do. This poem makes the reader think about the meaning of the poem. The more it is read the more thinking the reader has to do in order to analyze it. When the poem was first assigned I was confused on its meaning. When I went to class my group at the time started a discussion about this poem and how none of us really thought about this interpretation of the men dying but not the seven. I was relieved since I was not the only one who had this problem.
When I first read this poem, I did not understand what it meant at all. I knew that it was about the men that died, but that’s about it. It was really confusing because I knew what was happening, but I did not get the actual poem. After talking with the group, I was able to achieve a deeper understanding of the poem and its meaning which helped me in a future blog post. In my interpretation the poem means that only the people die but not the description or the name. The description/ name is the seven which never dies. While, the men do die as they are the actual people. My interpretation took me multiple analysis of the poem to get. In the end I was able to talk through with my group and do some individual work to further my knowledge helping me in the future.
Another example of group work would be when we had to do a group blog post about fesmerization. I was put into a group with Lyndsey, Molly, Darby, Emma, and Chaim. We first all began to research the topic and put what we thought was necessary for the assignment in a google docs. Most of the research we found was similar to what everyone had. This was due to the fact that almost all of us used the same websites to get the information. After we finished going over the information, we found we discussed as a group what we should and should not keep. We mostly just had who Franz Anton Mesmer was and what fesmerization was. We then decided to start with the first prompt which was to teach the readers about Franz Anton Mesmer and why he was famous. We got that “Franz Anton Mesmer was a German-born Viennese scholar who did not like the concept of medicine in his day, and thought that it’s solutions to health problems were too painful and unnecessary. Using all of his previous knowledge and experience, Mesmer created a new scientific study of hypnosis and hypnotherapy.”
During this period my group and I talked about how cool it was that Percival Everett made such a character in the book and even created fesmerization. His play on word and the character made the book really enjoyable and exciting to read. Molly then brought up that she found it really cool that he was able to write about existing people in a satirical way. For example, we all know the fesmerization is a play on mesmerization. This understanding of the original words makes it even more comical in a way because we know the meaning of the actual word that Everett plays on it is just a satirical concept.
All in all, I am appreciative for all the things that I have learned in class as a group and by myself. This course helped me academically but also in team/group work. I was able to unpack my thoughts making me a better writer in the process. Interacting with these fantastic students and sharing my work was a bit uncomfortable at the beginning of the course, but now I am more comfortable with putting my ideas and feelings into class discussions. As a result of this, I will be a better person, scholar, and writer. I would like to thank you, professor Beth McCoy, for providing a great classroom environment. You taught me so much during this semester, and I really enjoyed learning in your class.