working alongside people in group work

My main examples come from university.

1) I didn't know the people that well, which wasn't a good starting point. I tried to pretend that everything was fine but anxiety chose my path for me because I basically couldn't cope with the group dynamic. I avoided the group and avoided doing the work out of severe anxiety and stress so that was clearly not going to work out well. Of course I didn't know of my condition back then. The rest of the group saw me as a slacker I guess and told the lecturer who then pulled me in for a private conversation where I ended up dropping out of the group project and instead I just got to work on getting the credits for the rest of the modules I was taking for the rest of the year so that I could always carry them over to a different course if I wanted.

2) Just for reference, I dropped out of my first university course, took time out to reconsider things and then went to a different university to do a different course. I formed a group with three friends from the course, which was a helpful start in a way. I was seen as a good and reliable worker in the group, which was good. Again, this was before I had a diagnosis for my condition. I was a key part of the group in helping to lead it and ensure the work was assigned, people knew what they were doing and that the work was to get done. Unfortunately, there were 2 issues. The first being that one member didn't want to admit they didn't know what they were doing until we were getting much nearer the deadline so I stepped in to start offering some assistance on books to read, websites to look at, ideas for what to write, but it kind of ended up with myself and the other key member of the group finishing off his work as we didn't want his poor work to lower the group grade. Secondly, another member of our group was found to have plagiarised his work by the other key member of the group, who found everything through google. We scrapped his plagiarised work and then the rest of us had to do his work because his work commitments prevented him from sorting out his group assignment work, which took a lot of work and all nighters. So, we had stayed up all night the day before the work was due to be handed in, so the two I was with at the time agreed that as I was the most reliable one in the group I would make sure I attended to hand the work in. I did attend the lecture and handed the work in.

So, I feel the differences in these examples really came down to who I was working with, how confident I felt with the work that was assigned, what I needed to be doing, so I suppose the second project felt more structured, which made me feel a bit more comfortable and more at ease with what needed to be done as well as knowing the people I was working with, which also helped to make me feel a bit more at ease.

My main examples come from university.

1) I didn't know the people that well, which wasn't a good starting point. I tried to pretend that everything was fine but anxiety chose my path for me because I basically couldn't cope with the group dynamic. I avoided the group and avoided doing the work out of severe anxiety and stress so that was clearly not going to work out well. Of course I didn't know of my condition back then. The rest of the group saw me as a slacker I guess and told the lecturer who then pulled me in for a private conversation where I ended up dropping out of the group project and instead I just got to work on getting the credits for the rest of the modules I was taking for the rest of the year so that I could always carry them over to a different course if I wanted.

2) Just for reference, I dropped out of my first university course, took time out to reconsider things and then went to a different university to do a different course. I formed a group with three friends from the course, which was a helpful start in a way. I was seen as a good and reliable worker in the group, which was good. Again, this was before I had a diagnosis for my condition. I was a key part of the group in helping to lead it and ensure the work was assigned, people knew what they were doing and that the work was to get done. Unfortunately, there were 2 issues. The first being that one member didn't want to admit they didn't know what they were doing until we were getting much nearer the deadline so I stepped in to start offering some assistance on books to read, websites to look at, ideas for what to write, but it kind of ended up with myself and the other key member of the group finishing off his work as we didn't want his poor work to lower the group grade. Secondly, another member of our group was found to have plagiarised his work by the other key member of the group, who found everything through google. We scrapped his plagiarised work and then the rest of us had to do his work because his work commitments prevented him from sorting out his group assignment work, which took a lot of work and all nighters. So, we had stayed up all night the day before the work was due to be handed in, so the two I was with at the time agreed that as I was the most reliable one in the group I would make sure I attended to hand the work in. I did attend the lecture and handed the work in.

So, I feel the differences in these examples really came down to who I was working with, how confident I felt with the work that was assigned, what I needed to be doing, so I suppose the second project felt more structured, which made me feel a bit more comfortable and more at ease with what needed to be done as well as knowing the people I was working with, which also helped to make me feel a bit more at ease.