As everyone races to finish their semester’s work, Baylee Byford realizes how much she dislikes group projects.

“I don’t like to depend on others when it comes to my grades,” said the junior Health Studies major. “You never know what type of people you are going to have to work with and that can be a huge factor in one’s success.”

Byford learned to be skeptical of groups the hard way. 

“One of the worst experiences I’ve had is a group member not showing up to any of the group meetings that we had for a project,” said Byford. “We began working on it two weeks before it was due and we left him with a small portion of the project to do.

“The days kept going by and we heard nothing from him and his part was still not done,” she said. “The night before the presentation was due, he contacted us and said he would have it submitted by the morning before class started.”

But that didn’t happen. 

“He didn’t show up to class that morning and we started getting concerned as we were up next to present,” Byford said. “When we finally went up front, our professor told us he just dropped the class and hoped that he told us so we could do his part.” 

The presentation did not go well. 

“His part was not done and we missed lots of points for not having a major part of the project turned in,” she said. “I was so heated at that kid but, don’t worry, I finagled my way into getting those points back.”