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GabrielDuquette comments on The trouble with teamwork - Less Wrong
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"Realize that the outcome is what's important, and it's not your responsibility to coax and prod every group member into a state of motivation and competence if they're not already there; in the same way, it's not others' responsibility to do that for you."
This is an extremely difficult lesson to learn.
I wonder... how many learned to work hard because someone else DIDN'T follow this rule?
There are cases specifically intended not to follow that rule. For example, when my advisor takes on undergraduates for research projects and they haven't done research before, he does coax and prod them, and he encourages the more experienced student members of the group to do the same. In that case, the result doesn't matter so much; the project, at least initially, is meant to be an experience in which members can develop competency and motivation. Some amount of hand-holding will be necessary.
Often, teachers think they're creating this same sort of environment by assigning group projects. However, the project is structured so that the grade is still the most important thing. For a student assigned such a project, it's important for em to realize that ey has no moral obligation to go along with the teacher's implied intention for the project. Developing that sort of mindset is then helpful down the road, when one is involved in other projects where the result is most important.
Please consider using "e" instead of "ey" or conjugating the "ey" as one would "they". Spivak pronouns don't annoy me but "mis"-conjugation does. This may not be worth the effort to you but there probably exist some others with the same foibles as me.
thanks.
Spivak pronouns are intended to be conjugated with singular third person verbs.
I didn't. I learned the rule when I was left to my own devices and began to fail because nobody was prodding me (ie in university, fresh out of high school).
I think failing personally (rather than watching other people fail) is a far more powerful motivator.
Really? University was terrible for my work habits. I was used to having a constant stream of projects and assignments, and all of a sudden it was just midterms and finals. I went to all my anatomy classes and studied maybe a few hours total and pulled off an A+. Which was awesome, but now I expect school to be like that and I feel resentful when they give us assignments that actually need to be worked on outside of class.
(The fact that my academic courses in first year were all related to biology, the area where I had the most general knowledge already, made it a lot easier. In, say, physics, I would have had to study very hard for an A+).
Yep - I did that at fist too. Mainly because I began in Maths - which I was really good at... that led to me getting lax and assuming that I didn't have to do any work at all... Generally I found I got 90-100% in the subjects I was interested in... and barely scraped through on the ones I didn't like... eventually I failed one - one that I knew was easy enough that I should have aced.
That woke me up and I started to try to change my habits... but because I'd basically been slacking for over a year by then - I was so out of the habit of actually working that I also resented it. I also didn't have deadlines (except the mid-term/final one), and was living away from home - and there are SO MANY DISTRACTIONS at university... so it was a hard slog to learn to actually work. :P
But eventually I did...