Dear Ms Cheryl, Ms Hana, Ms Serene and Ms Stephanie,
We are Sheila Ho and Jolyn Goh from TB62.
We are writing today in regards of our performance in our group projects and what is going on behind the scenes of the projects.
To start off , this semester was extremely hectic. Possessing zero to minimal prior knowledge about psychology and statistics (for almost all members), it was hard to kick start the project especially aspects involving SPSS. Other project deadlines as well as tests were crammed all tightly together in three weeks and despite making efforts to start early, it seemed pretty impossible to complete on time.
Our group even made efforts to meet up to overnight together to complete the integrated project. Perhaps it was due to our tiredness, that many mistakes were committed. But we felt that overnight was necessary, because there were a ton of things needed to be completed, and time was very, very tight.
This leads to our main purpose of writing this email. How could time be so extremely tight when we started off early? We felt that this could be largely due to many member’s lack of display of co-operation and group dynamics. Among all the members, objectively speaking, we (Jolyn and Sheila) were doing the most work. We were the earliest to come for meetings, and the last to leave. On top of that, while other members spent only 1 night overnight in school, we overnight for a total of 4 nights in school (We need school network for SPSS), with maximum only 1 hour of sleep while overnight, and this is exclusive of the overnights done at home. The average we slept were around 2-3 hours per night, and we could not even catch a break because we felt that all the burdens and responsibilities were on our shoulders. The other members, however, had it easy. They could go out and meet their girlfriends and have a date, go for frequent driving sessions, leave early, arrive late, etc. they were, in comparison, extremely relaxed about the project deadlines as compared to us.
This was extremely unfair for us. During project meetings, they arrived late, achieved little, and left early, leaving most of the tedious and difficult work for us to settle. Even during project submission for social psychology, I could clearly remember, only 3 members stayed for the submission at 5pm. The 3 members were us and yifei. The rest of the members went off early, citing whatever excuses they could give, and left the submission for us to do. The excuses were things like “I’m going NUS (girlfriend is from NUS)”, “You all still need help anot? I can go off first right?” and “I have driving later”. We did not alter what they said, it was exactly that. We felt that even though we did not really need them to be there to do work, but as group members, they should at the very least, be there for moral support, and be there for whatever help they could give us, especially when submission was so near. Whatever happened to “all for one, one for all?” They could so easily just leave because they have activities going on. There was no sacrifice on their part for projects. If they had a dinner date, they would go for the dinner date. What about us? We sacrificed our social life, our sleep, even eating and many many many other things during the hectic 3 weeks. We did NOT STOP doing work, at all. Because we seem to be the overall in charge of the projects (because the other members know nuts about the progress), we have to constantly tell them what to do, explain to them and give instructions, which adds on to the list of burdens and responsibilities that we already have.
If they had taken a tad more initiative, stayed a little longer for project meetings, and gave more effort in their work instead of submitting work that we CONSTANTLY has to redo, we would really appreciate it a lot, and our burdens would be relieved at least.. a little more. We cannot comprehend how our group members could be so selfish, to leave us on the lurch and make us do most of the work by ourselves. Not even their physical presence were there… that was HOW LITTLE SACRIFICE they made. Of course, to be reasonable, they did work. But, never exceeded their comfort zone. And of course, some were more hardworking than the others, more willing and provided more moral support. One of which we would like to mention, was YiFei. Perhaps when we look at it individually, they could argue they did work, which we will not deny. Lets say, 3 hours on average for all the members, excluding yifei me and jolyn. That seems pretty okay. But lets compare it to us, 16-18 hours of work a day on average. That really makes the other member’s contribution pales ALOT in comparison. If they could put in the extra few hours, our 16-18 hours can be reduced. But they did not, in which we had plenty of issues about.
When we tasked them to do work, the work quality, most of the time, is really bad. In which, who suffers? Me and Jolyn, for we had to redo their work. It was also ALWAYS submitted late. If they promised 5pm on Thursday, it probably would be handed up the next day or something. Procrastinating seems to be the talent of most group members. They really have zero sense of urgency. This results in lots of dragging and which also pulls down overall performance and explains why work always cannot be completed on time, and we are always rushing for project deadlines, and along the way, making tons and tons and tons of mistakes.
To quote some of them, they even drew the line of their job scope. “I contributed for most of BBCP, so i don’t need touch Social psychology right?” This was rather unreasonable, for BBCP’s workload was really, really, really much lesser than social psychology, in which social psychology we actually did the experiment twice (on 42 participants, so 42 x 2), had a report, and a presentation. BBCP only had presentation, that was all.
Another “I’m not touching SPSS, but i can do the analysis”. We all know SPSS is the tedious and most difficult parts. The analysis was honestly, in comparison, way easier than the SPSS. Yet they could draw the line so clearly. NO one was willing to do SPSS in the group, so that leaves us to deal with it. (Sheila was from entrepreneurship specialisation, and knows nothing about SPSS prior.)
Malvick (the one who was peer evaluated for IP) often promises that he will help us with SPSS but whenever we started on it, he will expressly take up another easier and “insignificant” task. He makes empty promises and claims that he will do this and that, but no work is produced almost every time. He also thinks that just because he always “offer” to do work, he is actually doing alot. But his work is bad, often submitted late, and we honestly don’t need him for help because he is so untrustworthy. When mentioned to him directly, he got super defensive and even claimed that it was our fault for not entrusting work to him in the first place which translates to his lack of contribution. Why would we want to entrust him important work after seeing his performance? So that we can redo it?
We cautioned to Malvick how unhappy we felt towards him approximately 3 weeks before end of projects through Ying Jie. Ying Jie spoke to him about how unhappy we felt towards his nonchalant attitude towards. Also, a few days later, Jolyn spoke to him about it. He clearly understands the issues we had against him. However, there was no improvements at all.
I would also like to highlight, during the night where all 6 members overnight (one night before IP submission was due), the only people doing serious work and barely slept, were me jolyn and yifei. Ying jie was alright even though he slept a little, at least he produced quality work and achieved quite a lot. However, the other two, slept throughout. We cannot comprehend why and how people can sleep in the presence of group members rushing for a project that they also have a part to play in. Apart from sleeping, they were watching shows! Enjoying life. That made us so mad. They were tasked to do limitations, in which was submitted in point form to us. And was really quite bad and irrelevant, in which Sheila and Yifei had to redo. The worst was, we sent them introduction to paraphrase, and they did it so half-heartedly, barely anything was changed. We had to check it and realise they barely paraphrased. That was extremely extremely selfish. If we did not check, our group would have been faulted for plagiarism in safe assign. And guess who had to redo everything? It was extremely unfair for us especially when we were already doing huge and tedious parts and they can’t even get the small parts right.
To add on, we conducted another project meeting after BBCP test, in which everyone was obviously very very tired. But the meeting was necessary. However, all 3 guys viewed it as a chore, expressed unwillingness and slept throughout the meeting, while we and yifei did work, despite being very, very tired.
We would like to highlight that it is partly our fault for not marking them down or telling them off. Apart from work attitude, almost all of them were very pleasant people and we got along well, which is why we felt guilty for telling them off or marking them down.Also, had they known that we peer evaluated them, our friendship would be affected and upcoming projects affected as well, which would make things worst. Moreover, we were really lacking in energy to scold or tell them off patiently. We had so many things on our hands, no time, no sleep, it was hard, and our patience was also running very, very low.
Now that projects, especially IP, are over, we finally could relax and absorb what happened during the past 3 weeks, and it began to dawn upon us that these group members, in terms of work attitude, were terrible. Our IP project went so badly that we were traumatized and suffered many sleepless nights and nightmares after the projects ended. But we felt extremely unjustified. It is not right to pinpoint or blame others, but we cant help ourselves to think that we are actually bearing the consequences of other people’s actions, and that was really unfair for us. Had the effort in our group been distributed evenly, and everybody co-operated, was not calculative, took initiative, made some effort to NOT submit some really really bad quality work, our IP results would not have been like this. Carelessness could be avoided entirely, for IP would not fall entirely into the hands of extremely tired members who did not sleep the whole night. The entire SPSS(for IP and social psychology) and ALL presentation slides, was done by solely Jolyn, whereas close to 85% of the social psychology project was done by Sheila. (which includes entire intro, method, analysis, limitations, recommendations, most of business applications, conducting of experiment, debrief, half of presentation slides, appendix)
It was very overwhelming and unbearable. Till now, we are not able to concentrate on our preparation for exams as every minute, we kept having thoughts about our poor IP results, the arduous process that we had to go through and the unjust we had to swallow and suffer secretly.
We both entered the semester with high hopes of having our grades for this semester pull up our cgpa, so that we could apply for a local university. We were extremely serious and this semester was crucial in determining our future, for we needed that bit more results to meet the cut off for our desired courses. However, it felt as though our future is about to be ruined because of projects, and this really demoralized us. We put in our 101% effort and put projects and grades above all things, yet were unable to do well, and this was not even because of our lack of effort, but because of selfish group mates who put their interest first before the group’s.
To be fair, we had a lack of contribution for BBCP. This was because, BBCP’s deadline falls on a Monday and social psychology fell on a Wednesday, and for SPSY, we had only finished experiment, methods and intro. We were so desperate that we split the team into half, 3 in charge of BBCP, and 3 others in charge of SPSY. If all did BBCP, who would do SPSY? When pinpointing out Malvick’s flaws to him, he actually retaliated and accused us of not contributing to BBCP, which we felt were extremely, extremely unfair to us. Firstly, the tasks he had to do (which he did badly), did not clash with BBCP. But, SPSY clashed with BBCP for us (sheila), and we (Sheila) had to choose either one to do. None of the members were clear for the progress of SPSY thus Sheila had to be in charge. For the SPSY presentation, the other members were actually tasked very clearly of what they had to say for their parts by Sheila, yet there were so many errors made by the other members when they presented, such as PERCEPTION that mature faces are intelligent, became MATURE FACES are intelligent. Others’ performance for presentation was hard for us to control, and we felt that we were brought down by others’ mistakes, and it was hard for us to swallow the fact that we had to bear consequences for others’ flaws.
We knew what was required and told the group mates in-charge of BBCP, but advice was not listened. (Interview answers should be integrated with marketing strategies of brand, and many others). That was so unfair. We were clear of the standards but we were so busy dealing with other projects to check their work, which resulted in BBCP not doing as well as desired.
All these stress we had resulted us in very little rest which further affected our own individual assignment and exams. Once again, we understand that tiredness or insufficient time are not good excuses for submitting poor quality work, but it is extremely unfair that despite being students who work hard and try their best in everything, the lack of help from our group mates were detrimental to our individual grades.
Once again, we understand that we ought to have peer evaluated our group mates so that teachers could talk to them and actions can be taken. However, we did not as that will definitely bring awkwardness and tension to the subsequent projects because most of them actually feel that it is sufficient “if they done their part” and do not really think they we are being “shortchanged”. In our previous semesters, there were occasions where we told teachers’ about unhappiness towards other team mates and it further negatively affected the entire team’s performance. Hence, that explains why we decided to tolerate and swallow our frustration inwardly.
Also, they were our friends, it was immorally wrong to mark a friend down and affect their grades. We only peer evaluated Malvick because he was the worse team mate in the group. We hope that most of them will never know the content of this email as it will definitely affect our friendships badly. This email is never meant to bring most of them down but we just felt it is important to let you know what Jolyn and I went through.
Thank you so much.
Regards,
Sheila & Jolyn
TB62
