Group Papers - Good or Bad?

Tree outside my dorm room window

                Hello everyone. As this is my last entry before you go trick-or-treating, I wish you all a very exciting Halloween. I don’t have any cool pictures to go along with this entry, but I’ll show you the amazing tree that’s outside my dorm room window. What’re you going to be for Halloween? I’m planning on dressing as a devil. It’s going to be amazing. I’ll post pictures in my next blog.

                This past Tuesday, I handed in the longest paper I have yet to write in college: nine pages. I know that college requires papers much longer than that, but given that I’m taking mostly math and science courses, I don’t need to write very much. The paper was for my management class and it was actually a group project. As you may know from previous entries, the project was a service learning project in which my group had a raffle for the Clark University Thrift Store.  I worked with four other students who each wrote a section of the paper and I wrote the summary at the beginning and edited the rest of the paper. In case you didn’t know, I was editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper, so editing is one of my strengths.

                This paper was by no stretch of the imagination easy to edit. Our group members were randomly selected and each of us had a very different writing style and vocabulary. My job was to not only ensure the content was consistent, but I had to delete all redundancies and create a flow to make the essay appear as it was written by one person. This took several hours of reading and rereading, but my group and I are pleased with the result.

                I can definitely see the benefits of working in a group for a paper. We were able to discuss what elements should go in each section of the paper and combine our capabilities to creating the best overall quality. I didn’t mention that throughout the writing process, we exchanged sections with other group members to ensure we were on track. This definitely made my job as the editor a bit easier. However, I am one who would rather write papers on my own. It was a learning process to figure out the best way to effectively and efficiently work with and set deadlines for other writers. I have never been so happy when everyone in the group had their sections done on our set date. After two years of being in charge of a high school newspaper with no one meeting deadlines, having work in on time is so great.

                While writing papers independently can help you grow as a writer, compiling and formatting a paper from multiple writers can help even more. Looking at other writing styles, I was able to notice patterns in what writing is more effective and I incorporated those patterns throughout the paper.

                Our next group project for management involves an online simulation of what it’s like for a computer-selling company to make profits. I don’t know too much about it yet, but it seems really interesting, so you’ll definitely hear more about it. Have a great Halloween!