Group Projects

Group projects. They are the bane of my college experience. I was thinking that thirty years or so ago students didn’t do a whole lot of group work. Then I realized that was not exactly true, at least not for me. But the groups I was in were different. There was always a maniacal dictator who stood up in front maintaining order by waving a sharp-pointed object around. He (sorry, but it was always a he) reigned supreme over the group, often thundering with anguished rage when someone did not pull their weight. “You kids are killing me!”, an Interlochen director once screamed when somebody missed an entrance. It was probably the trombone section because they sat way up in the back and typically got away with all kinds of shenanigans behind the dictator’s back. I, however, always had the wonderful luck to sit right smack underneath the guy with the baton. Mind my Ps and Qs? You betcha! I was petrified of playing a wrong note or counting wrong or being sharp in the high register. And flutes are *always* sharp in the high register. Sigh. I dunno, I suppose it was just a different set of group issues.

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