Students of all ages can understand the horror of group projects. If you are in middle school or high school, the projects can be relatively insignificant or short-term that don’t really cause too much stress overall.

When you are in college, however, group projects can last all semester or long stretches of time. This can be good if you are in a group that gets along well or a group that equally shares the work.

This concept of a perfect group is usually a concept that is few and far between. It is extremely hard to work together and make sure everyone does their job.

Inevitably, there will be someone, or a few people, who end up doing most if not all of the work to carry the team, so they themselves don’t get a bad grade. There are always some who couldn’t care any less about the project and claims they have other things to do. It’s always an excuse with that person, and to everyone else, it's a pain in the neck.

When you study something like Radio/TV/Film like I do, you always end up with group projects. I have worked on a lot of commercials, films, PSAs, and newscasts with a lot of different people. Most of the people I have worked with genuinely care about what they do. Some, however, care too much.

To me, a “tryhard” is a pain to work with. They monopolize the project and just automatically put themselves in charge. They don’t listen to the other group members. They treat their groupmates like assistants and not like equals.

Group projects are hard also because of scheduling and time management. A time that works for one person may not work for the rest of the group, and it’s so hard to coordinate schedules with everyone. No one is ever available at the same time, so there is someone missing.

As a note to all professors, just give me a paper instead of a group assignment. There are way too many issues with group projects, and no one actually learns anything.