Groupon

Working in groups is something with which I've always had difficulty. Ironically, this hasn't come up much in actual jobs. Plenty of people have to work in groups as part of their job, but I've never had that experience. It's always been me with a task that needs to be performed and me performing that task, and succeeding ones, until it was time to go home. School is where working in a group was perennially present, whether we're talking about public school, private and public universities, or vocational college. As social skills are something with which autistics commonly struggle, it's not much of a surprise that working in a group has never gone well for me. Over the years, I've explained this to the various teachers and professors under whom I've studied. Sometimes they let me do the work on my own and other times they don't, but they usually realize, one way or the other, that letting me work on my own is for the best. When forced to work in a group, the results, although unpleasant and unproductive, are childishly easy to predict.

If the relevant pedagogue ibis upon me working in a group, this will yield one of three possible results. The first option is that the others in the group, noticing that I actually care about the outcome more than they do, will proceed to do nothing, in which case I will simply do all the work by myself so as to not face a steaming pile of a grade at the conclusion. Secondly, the other members of the group are friends and all agree upon the idea that I am a weird guy with whom they would rather not work, resulting in my complete uninvolvement with any of the work and my awkward forced smile when I say nothing as the results of said work as presently. Thirdly, the relevant pedagogue will seek a half-measure whereby they and I will form one of the groups, which is an awkward option, if preferable to option one and two. Rarely have I had a class where I was forced to participate in option one or two for the entirety of a semester. Usually, the relevant pedagogue will eventually opt for either option three or simply let me work in a group by myself, as it is often phrased.

Thankfully, I no longer have occasion to work in groups. What's striking to me about the phenomenon as I experienced it is that it's about the only scenario of which I am aware that social rejection that blatant is permissible. Of course, nobody forces anyone to be friends with anyone or anything, but students are generally taught to cooperate with their education in all other areas. What, exactly, then, is working in a group supposed to teach us? There's no way it's supposed to prepare us for actually working in a group, since group work is generally so unsupervised that it's laughable to suggest that we're actually being taught anything. Perhaps it's more subversive than that. Maybe they're intending to imply the lesson that people generally suck and group work is to be avoided whenever possible. Of course, I cannot help that this, as with all things I write, comes from an autistic perspective and it is entirely possible that, while I was drowning in frustration and isolation, my classmates were learning life lessons somehow beyond my ken.

-Frank