Working on a project in a group is a chore students have to deal with in many occasions of their supposed learning journey, but with every project group, there will always be an intellectually-evolved student who watches over the others while playing games on his PSP- the Project Group Leader. When you find yourself in a situation where you are assigned as a project group leader, you should be proud to inherit the inherent aptitude your position potentially possess. Although a project group leader’s traditional job is to receive the rage of the lecturers and transferring the torment to the bottom of the project food chain, this may be changed with careful planning. When you play your cards right, everyone would be fighting amongst each other while you would be clinching that A and your Porch hence thereof.

Project Group Slaves

The students who would be working towards your A, known as the project group slaves, are your minions whose only skill needed is the ability to follow your orders blindly without expecting returns of any sort. However, their ease of replacement doesn’t dismiss the advantages of choosing the optimum slaves.

Choosing the right project group slaves:

Nothing makes your life easier than to have blind followers smart enough to get you your A without you having to beat down the smart into them. There is bound to be some valuable pawns amidst all the trash just waiting to be your slave, you just have to know which to pick. For this, we can run a simple exercise to rule out the best candidate out of the rest of the trash.

Potential Slave 1: A geeky-looking straight A student in your class. She has never failed to ace a single test in her life. However, she was kicked out of her previous group because she was too irksome (teenage dispute) and was getting onto her group’s nerves. She once got into a violent argument with you insisting that the North Pole is colder than the South Pole.

Potential Slave 2: Some hippie who reeked of crack. He seemed like a cool guy, pulling off the cyclops hairstyle while smoking a cigarette. Surprisingly, he’s smart, being one of the top students in school. Moreover, he became the captain of the debate team after winning a debate against the ex-captain. He is known to work very well in a group, leading his team to achieving a Gold for the debating competition.

Potential Slave 3: An inconspicuous introvert that barely anyone in school knows the name of. Your lecturers often miss out his name during attendance taking. The few friends he has commented that he is diligent, further adding that he spends half of his day everyday of his life studying. Unfortunately, this isn’t reflected in his grades and he is thus left without much credit for his hard work. He has an untainted, kind heart that often does more harm than good. He often run errands for people fortunate enough to notice his existence.

Loners are the best catch as they turn out to be devoted friends and are therefore easily manipulated.

Potential Slave 2 is the ideal choice for the conventional project group. All the same, Potential Slave 2 does not go very well with your grand scheme. His background of being a debater alone leaves you at a disadvantageous position with his innate ability to argue and question your judgement. What more, he has a reputation of overthrowing leadership positions in the debating team, which leaves you more prone to a coup d’etat. He’s going to be a troublemaker. Potential Slave 1 is the best option of the three. Potential Slave 3 is an inferior choice but his pushover attitude can be exploited. You may keep Potential Slave 3 on hand to replace any of your other slaves in case they fall dead due to overwork. It doesn’t matter if your slave is extremely irritating. You will not be the one having to work with her for whole days.

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Lecturers are your project provider, friend and scapegoat all in one.

Lecturers

Effectively dealing with the lecturers is an important part of being a good project group leader. Considering your lecturers are usually cooped up in their office doing work unrelated to the project you are working on, it is fairly easy to complete this meagre task. To do this, a project group leader must play on the fact that he is essentially the primary channel of communication between the lecturers and the rest of the project group slaves. As far as your project group slaves are concerned, whatever you tell them to do is under the direct instructions of your lecturers- no hard feelings, just doing your job. This allows you to not only transfer your apparent stress of being a group leader upon them, but also ensures that you will not be the immediate source of anger release when one of your project group slaves shows up in school with a knife one day.

You’re almost done

With the proper techniques in your arsenal, you can now manage and deal with projects confidently in the new age. Pick up a project and some disposable working dolls and you’re all set to drive off on your brand new Porch!