‘They changed their topic the night before’: Lancs students’ worst group project stories

Group projects can literally make or break uni friendships. You might think you get along with that guy in your seminar, but as soon as the group project rolls around and you’re spending your evenings trying to get people to upload their work to Google Slides and actually turn up to meetings, any possible friendship is completely out of the question while you’re silently praying for them to switch modules, or even university.

We asked Lancs students to tell us their best (or, more likely, worst) group project horror stories, and compiled them all into one article, just so you can be rest assured that you’re not alone in your project nightmares.

‘This lad walked in at the exact second he had to start talking’

We can imagine the stress you felt waiting for him to turn up, and the subsequent relief when they finally turned up. PSA to all students: If you’re doing a group presentation, please turn up early (or at least on time) – it will save your co-presenters so much stress and they might not harbour a grudge against you for the rest of the uni year.

‘Someone did their slides on the bus to the 10am seminar it was due in’

This is procrastination on such a high level that we HAVE to know whether you got a good grade out of this or not. Was it obvious they were done last minute, or did they somehow create a masterpiece under pressure? Honestly, if they did, it’s kind of hard not to respect the hustle.

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We still wouldn’t recommend this, though. Leaving your coursework until the weekend before it’s due is one thing, but only doing your section of the group project right before you present is a surefire way to make your coursemates hate you.

‘They deleted all of our messages in the group chat and told the lecturer we weren’t replying to their texts’

We did it, we found the worst possible group project horror story. This is especially bad, because the person who told us about this said it happened to their friends, and they actually got in trouble with the university for this bizarre lie. We normally wouldn’t advise holding grudges, but honestly, nobody would blame you if you were still ranting about it in ten years.

‘Booked a room for five of us, only I turned up’

We’re cringing at the thought of the awkward messages you probably had to send afterwards, asking where people were. It’s the kind of awkward memory that haunts you at 2am a year later when you’re lying awake in bed – definitely not something you want to have happen in a project.

‘Tried to share the PowerPoint and did it wrong and random people got in and started editing it’

We don’t envy you for the panic you must have had when you opened the powerpoint and saw loads of changes. Hopefully, this didn’t happen too close to the deadline and you managed to re-write any lost sections.

‘One of them went travelling so didn’t do any of the work and wasn’t even there to present it’

Uni students have heard loads of stories of people not pulling their weight in a group project, but not doing anything at all? Complete betrayal.

‘Someone changed their topic the night before without saying anything’

There’s not a single reason that we can think of for someone would choose to do this – did they not think that they should be talking about the same planned topics as everyone else in the group? We have to know how this worked out.

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