Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with collaboration

Help a team get some stuff done.

nosila — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 08:42:40 -0800

I need to find a to-do/productive/teamwork app with a fairly specific feature set. It has to be... * iOS compatible (preferably w/ a native app)
* collaborative
* priority-based (drag and drop in order of priority or at least a point system)

VERY nice to have:
* IE8 compatible (I know...ugh.)
* native Android app
* free

To give a little more context -- this is to organize features for a new web application w/ non-tech people. Ideally, anyone on the team would be able to add/edit features, add notes, etc., then anyone else would be able to prioritize. It's the IE8 part that makes this really difficult -- unfortunately, that's the browser the boss has access to, although he's willing to potentially use his iPhone/iPad.

We already have a Basecamp account, so if that's the answer, that's okay, but it's not really what I had in mind.

Thanks!

Tips for working with a with a comic artist

ropeladder — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 06:00:51 -0800

I have an econ blog and asked a friend of mine to help illustrate some posts with comics. He agreed! Have you been on either side of a comparable collaboration? Could you offer some tips? I want to give him creative freedom and keep it fun for him, but I also have some ideas about what I'm looking for and not looking for. Help me honestly engage him and balance these factors with creative/collaborative processes you've used, or stories or advice you may have from your own experience. I really don't want to come across to him as some cliched jerk: "well, that looks great, but what if we did this instead..."

It's entirely amateur and nobody has any expectations of making any money.

To describe more what we are working on:
My econ posts are generally long-winded, confusing theoretical essays, which I attempt to write for a general audience. My main goal for the comics is to make the writing more accessible and memorable and less intimidating, and I'm open to him doing whatever so long as it is on the same wavelength as the post. It can be somewhat hard to get the correct wavelength though, since posts tend to evolve a bit as I'm writing them and, like I said, they are pretty long and theoretical (and my friend doesn't have a background in econ).

Please help me phrase an uncomfortable but important email.

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 08:46:19 -0800

I thought he was attracted to me. I'm really attracted to him. Turns out he's just really excited about my creative work. Help me find the words to be honest about the attraction and the fact that I'd like to get past that imbalance so we can do all the collaborations we want to do. I had a misunderstanding with someone I contacted on an online dating site. I thought he and I were getting excited about each other romantically as well as getting really excited about each other's work (we're both accomplished pros in the same creative field). He just thought we were getting really excited about each other's work.

I was under this wrong impression for long enough to develop plenty of fantasies about him -- definitely sexual fantasies, and more importantly creative fantasies (about the potential for working together specifically in ways inspired by our feelings for each other). That kind of mutual creative+romantic inspiration is what I'm most looking for in life, so it's logical for me to have projected it onto someone's purely platonic excitement.

I don't know whether this was a miscommunication all along (i.e., he was never considering a romantic relationship and assumed I contacted him on a dating site just because we're in the same fairly obscure field) or a situation where he needed us to spend more time together in person before he could decide whether he was attracted to me. I am guessing it's the latter, which of course also stings on a surface level beyond the deeper disappointment.

So, now that he's been clear that he's extremely excited about my work and thinking, and certainly wants us to be good friends and collaborators, but is not interested in anything "more intimate," I need to communicate to him the following (which I was not able to communicate in the moment when he said that; my best guess is that what he sensed was some disappointment but not my actual level of surprise or disappointment): - I misread the situation and was really attracted to him; - although I'm disappointed and kind of embarrassed, my best guess is that this won't be a long-term issue, that I'll settle into being quite comfortable with being his friend and collaborator, if that's also comfortable for him.

This is hard in part because I've never been in this situation before. Pretending the attraction never existed is not an option - transparency's always important to me, but it's especially crucial if I want to do any real work with someone else.

He and I are both mid-30s, mid-career, each working at a level where collaboration would clearly be mutually beneficial beyond our admiration for each other's work. (Also: I'm female, just so nobody has to assume / reach for pronouns.

Tracking project progress

rastapasta — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 19:11:48 -0800

Asking for a friend: three people working on a startup together. There are numerous tasks and to-dos and they need a website to track it (what needs to be done, who's doing it, progress, etc.). Something pretty simple would probably be best. Recommendations?

what tools and models do we have for collaboration in the humanities?

idlethink — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 07:11:10 -0800

what tools and platforms exist right now which humanists can use to do collaborative research? what models exist of successful humanities collaboration? I'm curious to hear, from librarians or other academics or anyone with experience working on collaborative research projects, what specific tools you've used for doing so and what's worked (or hasn't!) for you. I know there's much more collaboration in the sciences and I'm open to hearing about this too. I'm interested in any part of the collaborative process, from gathering research all the way to joint writing. Here are some very basic ones I can think of off the top of my head:
- Google documents for joint writing and notes
- Participad, a wordpress plugin allowing real-time editing and editorial conflict resolution
- Emailed word documents & track changes; Dropbox or similar for file-sharing
- Wikis to gather research e.g. PBWiki, MediaWiki
- Group blogging
- CUNY's very new Commons in a Box - I've no first-hand experience of this, but it looks promising, and I'd be interested to find more of this sort of thing.

I'd also be interested in hearing about existing (successful) examples of research collaboration on digital platforms and particularly co-authorship: any discipline, although the more applicable to the humanities, the better. Some I can think of:
- 22 authors writing a book together
- an open-access collaboratively-written book on the digital humanities [pdf] (scroll to to the end for "production notes")
- Timothy Gowers' experiment into "massively collaborative mathematics"
- in the more "conventional" category, the Modern Girl Around the World research group at University of Washington; this was not on any sustained digital platform but was fairly uniquely centered around a cross-disciplinary transnational research agenda and produced a co-written book and articles.

Thanks in advance!

Bookmarking Utility That Can Group and Organize Links

aabbbiee — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 12:09:35 -0800

I'm looking for a collaborative bookmarking utility that can group links and organize links within the groups. It should be easy. We have no budget. I do a weekly radio show with three other co-hosts on the topic of technology news. Each week, we collect stories from online sources. Before the show, we put the stories in order: main stories go on top, with headlines at the bottom. There are usually about 40-50 links each week: 10 for the main story, and the rest for the headline reporting.

I am looking for a way to effectively and efficiently bookmark and share these links.
I want to be able to
- have 4 different people bookmark links to share
- save the links in a group for each week's show
- easily rank or organize the links within the group for each week's show
- have a permalink to the group for each week's show
- This should be accessible on the web and also by iOS if possible.

We used Delicious for awhile this year and it was a big improvement. Then Delicious discontinued the use of "stacks" (groups of links) and told us that we should just use tags instead. But we can't organize/rank the links within the tag group, and that's pretty critical because otherwise it's just a mess of links and hard to parse while flipping between stories live on the air.
Prior to Delicious, our main host would save links in a text file and then email us the text file on the day of the show, sometimes just 30 minutes prior. That gave us very little time to review the day's stories. He's now posting them all to Delicious. I think he's given up on the tags because they're a huge hassle with the volume of links that he saves. But I started pushing each new link from Delicious to Twitter, and they're slightly easier to peruse on Twitter than on Delicious. But they're still not organized.

This is a long-running show on a community radio station and I'm the newest co-host. I think the show is long and slow and drags at times, especially when we're pausing to look for our links while we're on the air. I try to hit the ground running every week, but that is hard to do as is. If the stories aren't organized, we have to take time to search. If we don't share the stories before the show, none of us are familiar with the news. But my co-hosts don't really see much of a problem, and I don't have much leverage to change their processes. They're comfortable, but it's not good radio.
However, they were disappointed when Delicious dropped the "stacks" option. I think they would migrate to a new system if it promised to be a good solution. But it has to be super easy. And we have no budget.

Do you know of a utility or tool that would work for me? I'm looking for any solution from stupidly simple to out of the box ideas. Please share!

Fostering collaboration online

AceRock — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:00:46 -0800

Have you ever collaborated on a project with someone you met on Mefi or elsewhere online? How did that happen? Was there something about how the online environment that made it easy to reach out or be approached? I'm interested in learning what kinds of dynamics or aspects of online communities foster collaboration. I would also be interested in hearing about times you may have collaborated with someone you met in person but that you didn't know very long or very well before your collaboration, and seeing how what lessons might apply to online communities. The reason I'm asking is, I am helping run a small online community and we are trying to foster collaboration.

Online communication tool for small team

allison00 — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:49:02 -0800

What is a good online communication tool for a small group? We are a team of 5 who all work in the same city but at different locations. We currently use MSN Messenger but need something else that will allow us to read the conversations that occurred when we were offline. We also need searching ability of the chat log. We would like to be able to include images/files in our chats but that is not a requirement. It needs to be free.

Collaborative on-line note-taking tool?

Mngo — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 11:32:58 -0800

Please recommend an on-line collaborative note-taking site to encourage a conference audience to creatively respond to presentations. I'm looking for a way for a group of people watching a web-cast to collaboratively take notes. Ideally, it would be a sort of combination of linear note-taking, chat, and mind-mapping. It's a day-long event, so we're not talking about just a few notes.

Is there anything out there that comes close? It should be trivially easy to access (i.e., just having the link should get you in). Free is best, but if I need to drop a little cash to get something good, that's OK.

[This is the closest previous question I've seen, and I'm looking into ConceptBoard--pros/cons are welcomed.]

Help us find and Mac and PC compatible multi-user drawing app

gc — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 05:01:26 -0800

My friend and I want to draw together. Two potential problems: First, I'm in Seattle, she's in Michigan. Second, I'm a Mac and she's a PC.

What I'm looking for is an application that would allow either of us to host a drawing session, and a nice set of tools and features, like layers and export ability, and the ability to use a tablet. We don't need Photoshop-like capabilities, but something like Sketchbook from Autodesk would be nice. I'm open to something like Oekaki boards, and I'd be will to look into installing one on my WebFactional account if need be, but something a little easier would be preferred. In-browser apps are good, too, but I'd like to avoid Flash. Voice chat is not necessary.

What I am not looking for are digital white boards. Basically, we want to be able to draw semi-decent-looking pictures.

Name of Designer + Developer collaboration site?

quadog — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 14:31:06 -0800

Help me remember the name of a site that was setup for designers and developers to share project opportunities to work together. The google no worky for me so I need your help finding this site set up to connect designers and developers for project collaboration.

Here's what I remember:
- it was started by a designer
- it it's based in New York
- it was launched (or relaunched?) within the past year
- it had a solid UI and search function
- there was definitely some activity on it but it wasn't overpopulated with users.

That's all I can remember. It was NOT setup as a standard-issue jobs or careers type site.

inb4 google wave

JimmyJames — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 05:45:14 -0800

Do you know of any online solutions to collect submissions from a group of people and then archive it in a useful way? Back story:
Currently, my Admin will ask teachers to write down followup questions, ideas, thoughts, etc on Post its after a staff meeting.
These ideas are sometimes re-typed and emailed out, or occasionally just put on the wall for the rest of the meeting.
I'm looking for a solution so that we could as a staff, compile our ideas into a online place and store them so that they would be archived and accessible. We all have laptops at staff meetings.

I envision it going something like this:
"Staff, please write down any resources/strategies you use to scaffold lessons for English Language Learners on the X"
X= newfangled wiki, forum, app...

Staff submits these ideas via simple GUI.

Submissions are easily viewed and archived as staff resource.

The solution could be something that is web based app, a third party website or even something I could install like a wiki or a forum.

Any and all resources that sound remotely useful are welcome. I'd rather sort through a ton of ideas than have people be afraid of it not being quite right. We would be happy to change our procedure to fit the right platform.

Thanks in advance.

Sharing good PowerPoint slides within a company

shotgunbooty — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 08:41:32 -0800

Please help me set up something like a shared shoebox for keeping useful PowerPoints slides, ideas for visual representations, graphics, etc. At work we spend a lot of time fussing with PowerPoint, especially putting together proposals and reports. A lot of the time we are duplicating efforts. We often discover that, after spending an hour on a slide, that someone else has created a similar slide for another deck and we would have saved ourselves a lot of time and effort if we didn't have to start from scratch.

My initial idea was to setup a dropbox folder. We also use Google apps (drive/docs) and Basecamp to share files. But the details are getting in the way here. One is, how to catalog the files? Tags? Categories? Descriptions? How to know what you're looking for in someone else's deck? How to motivate (incentivize?) people to regularly update the shoebox with useful slides and properly label/tag/categorize them?

All of these questions lead to one: Has anyone done this before? If you are doing it, how is your shoebox set up?

Looking for examples, workarounds, etc. Are there any out-of-box purpose-built solutions that I'm missing? While this is going to be a shared resource, if you have something you use just for yourself, I'd be interested in learning about it as well.

Thanks!

How do I collaborate with my bossy coworker and her nervous supervisee?

Sock Career-Puppet — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 09:46:18 -0800

How do I cope with a coworker bossing me when she's not my boss? Today my coworker straight up told me that she was delegating a specific project to me and her supervisee "to free up [her] time for other things." Although I want to work on the project, I don't want her thinking she can just delegate work to me whenever she gets too busy. Bonus: I’m finding it difficult to work with her supervisee. The bossy coworker, let's call her "Jael," and I are professionals at the same level in our small, flat organization. Both Jael and I work immediately under the Director; Jael has one other person in her department, her supervisee "Ham," while I am a one-person department. Due to weirdnesses of seniority and office size, Ham and I share an office, while Jael has her own office.

My work and Jael/Ham's work overlap, so it's natural for us to collaborate on some projects. Unfortunately my philosophy about what the end product of these projects should look like often conflicts with Jael/Ham's philosophy (Ham pretty much always agrees with Jael). This both motivates me to work on the projects (because I don't like the finished product when Jael and Ham do all the work) and makes it difficult for us to collaborate.

And then there's Ham. Ham is a very sensitive, nervous guy and when we disagree (or when Jael and I disagree) it seems to upset him. I don't think I'm being particularly aggressive, but when I disagree with his ideas or I'm not happy with the work he's done, I don't lie and say that I think it's great, I point out things that I would change (probably I could do better about picking at least one or two things that I like, and I will try to do that going forward). Plus I don't really trust him to criticize my work, because he is so conflict-averse. He just always says that he thinks my work is great, and if I want to get any actual feedback I have to ask a lot of leading questions about what I think his actual problems with my work might be. It's exhausting.

I don't really want to involve the Director - at my last performance review we talked a little about my work relationship with Jael and the Director basically said that Jael is not my boss and I don't need to do what Jael says, but that Jael would probably continue to try to tell me what to do. The Director didn't really give me any tips on *how* to not do what Jael says without causing trouble.

So: any hints on how to deal with either of these folks? We are all probably going to be working here for the next year or more. I suppose I could just refuse to collaborate with them but I worry that that would just make things even more uncomfortable, and anyway I like to have input into their projects.

Advice for difficult creative partnerships

steinsaltz — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 09:16:03 -0800

Creative differences: Is there any good advice or useful experiences out there about how to work diplomatically with bandmates or co-writers without murdering each other? Been working for years on a promising creative project with a friend. We might be at the last stages of getting it out the door, but the working relationship is driving me crazy.

At first it was one of the most fulfilling partnerships I've ever had. But now we've diverged in many ways, and it is frustrating me, but I don't know how to push production forward without having a fight.

My only role models I can think of are bandmates who can't get along, like Roger Waters fighting with David Gilmour over the direction of Pink Floyd. Except, unlike Roger Waters, my friend, because of life priorities, has very little time to dedicate to this thing I have been toiling on.

He doesn't place as much importance on it as I do, though he still has a sense of co-ownership. When he does make himself available, after putting the toddler to bed, he can become really pushy, the way only a high-powered attorney can get.

Lately all his new ideas actually seem wrong and offensive. I have to be the guardian of not ruining everything. He often wants to tear down things, including his own great original ideas, that we worked so hard to get right.

It's not just that he's tired all the time, but that he has deep-seated personal issues with women. One reason I want to do the next project solo is that I'm tired of having to police our work for old-school misogyny that he keeps wanting to inject, and which would guarantee that we alienate half of our potential audience.

Anyway, I am sure that my perspective is weird at this point, but is there any standard, time-tested advice out there--famous quotes or personal experiences--on how to work together creatively while minimizing tensions?

holy crap this might've been the only thing you could actually DO with google wave

NoraReed — Tue, 29 May 2012 20:06:58 -0800

My manperson/GM wants to play Dawn of Worlds, a roleplaying game where people collaboratively make a map, online. In order to do this, we need some kind of platform that can allow people to collaboratively edit an image with state saving and rollbackable images. Google Draw has the rolebackability and communication style that we want but it's not great for mapmaking. Something like DeviantArt's Muro, but collaborative and state-saving, would be great. Oekaki software is too buggy and low-res.

Does anything exist that we could do this kind of thing with?

How to email strangers who work in your academic area?

powerbumpkin — Tue, 29 May 2012 12:31:13 -0800

[Grad School Filter] “Hello more-established stranger who already did the academic research I wanted to do and my committee is making me email you…” Does anyone have any verbage that seems graceful and appropriate? Immediately following my dissertation proposal defense, I discovered a research monograph that does exactly what I had wanted to do! The authors conducted qualitative interviews on exactly my topic of interest. At first I was a little threatened by this, but then I realized:
1. They are in the UK and I am in the US. My work will automatically be “original” because it is conducted in the U.S.
2. I could easily think of some extensions to their work that I would like to add on. In fact their foundational work helped me to think of these extensions. The extensions are probably going to be the real meat of the refocused dissertation, though I intend to replicate some of their stuff as well.
3. They use a really cool method of getting at some of the information I want. I have stolen their method and begun using it in interviews.

My dissertation committee has suggested I get in contact with them. This is probably a dumb question, but how should I word such an email? Partly I’m having trouble reaching out because I don’t know what the point of it is, I mean is it for:
Networking?
Praising their previous work?
Soliciting feedback on my proposal, goals, hypotheses, methods?
Asking questions about their data?
Asking permission to borrow and cite their research method?
Asking for other literature I may not be aware of?

Am I missing anything? I guess it is for all these things, but maybe not all at once. Maybe over a year long correspondence? My question is how do I initiate contact without seeming insane or something.

Can anyone offer some “hello more established stranger who already did what I wanted to do (and my committee is making me email you)” verbage that seems graceful and appropriate?

Is there a basic online DAW that my friend in another city and I can use to collaborate on music?

pantufla — Tue, 22 May 2012 05:59:12 -0800

Is there a basic online DAW that my friend in another city and I can use to collaborate on music? We want to do an album in 24 hours, and we're looking for a site where we can upload parts of audio tracks we are working on and do basic editing on them. I had assumed that there must be several sites like this, but I've spent a while looking and the few that I found are too limited for our use. We need to be able to edit audio clips (cut, paste) and then place those clips with reasonable precision on a timeline, so that we can build songs. It'd be great if we could both be working on one song file at the same time, google docs style. Don't care about MIDI, virtual instruments, effects, or canned samples/loops. It'd be nice to be able to export the audio when we're done, but even that's not essential, because I can capture audio off the web. Thanks

Web/mobile app for planning adventures with friends.

Quisp Lover — Sun, 20 May 2012 17:18:12 -0800

Looking for a web/mobile app for planning adventures with friends. I'm always planning various adventures with various friends. I'd like to bring together different circles of friends by letting them all view planning discussions for each adventure, and they can browse and jump in wherever interested.

This would preferably be a web app (additional iphone app a plus), and it would have:

1. a place to describe the event, inputting text, links, and photos.

2. ability to discuss the event, message board style.

3. ability to invite people to view a specific event planning discussion, including via email (but you don't NEED an invitation...again, any friend can jump in).

4. a calendar to display final event scheduling (click an event therein to go to the planning discussion).

That's it!

I'd rather NOT use a full-barrel Event Planning/Inviting system. Too much! Prefer something much more free-form. Sleek, minimal, Apple-ish. Should be fun and easy to use, highlighting discussion rather than the software itself. Do not need lots of features and power.

I was considering Glassboard, but it lacks a calendar, and its tiny text input window is awkward for lots of text (e.g. lists of venues with address/phone) and won't allow formatting, live links, etc.

The ballad of what's-her-name and what's-his-name

waterlily — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:19:31 -0800

Singer/album identification: Young female singer who collaborated with an older male arranger/composer. (I believe he was a family friend). He created very ornate orchestral accompaniment from the demos she sent him. His arrangement is more classic movie score than Beethoven. I listened to it on Spotify a while ago and can't remember any more than that. Any ideas?

Not libertarianism, not socialism, something completely different

TheOtherSide — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 06:27:43 -0800

Where would I go to collaborate on re-architecting government? I have been thinking about governmental structures and their systematic effects ever since I had taken my first civics classes. Then, over the course of 25 years, I've gone from the 99th percentile in income all the way through the 2nd percentile. So, I believe I have formed a unique perspecive on living in America. I want to put that perspective and my thoughts on governmetnal structure to use in positive ways. I want to stop thinking about it and do something.

I have always thought that it would be close to impossible to change anything. But then recently, we have seen the tea party and the occupy wallstreet movements. We have seen the rise of a radical politician in Ron Paul. I certainly don't agree with his approach or values, but it gives me hope that things can change.

I truly believe that the US can change through civic reform. I believe that there are fundamental structures of the constitution that would allow for radial re-tooling of the current system.

Is there a place that I can go to meet with civic-minded, open-minded people who want to take on this daunting challenege? I am done with thinking and theorizing, and I want to challenge my ideas and put theory into action.

You got your chocolate in my peanut butter, etc.

bigbluehouse — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:09:49 -0800

Please help me come up with a list of great cross-discipline collaborations throughout history. An example of what I'm looking for is Salvador Dalí working with Alfred Hitchcock on Spellbound — a specific occasion of two people already famous in their own fields working on a project together.

I'm not looking for stories of two musicians — or two visual artists, etc. — working together, because they already work in the same medium. Additionally, film is already such a collaborative medium that I'd like to find examples from other realms if possible. Any stories of the arts crossing into business or politics or the like would be great. Go as far back in history as you like.

Thanks in advance!

How to have my open floor plan cake and also eat the cake without distracting everybody else.

michaelh — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 13:50:34 -0800

How can I create some privacy from noise in an open floor plan office (700 sq. feet) while keeping it a really cool, collaborative place? Weird ideas totally welcome! I saw this but nothing really seemed to be the right answer for us. We don't want walls to hang up pictures and we aren't trying to compromise with a cheap boss. We just want to be able to talk on the phone or have a conversation without everybody in the room easily hearing it, and little more. We want nothing that says in any way, "this office is boring and boring people work here." (The fact I have to ask this suggests I'm boring, but we shape the buildings and whatnot.)

The office is 700 square feet roughly in the shape of a golden rectangle. The walls are cement blocks but we're going to be covering those, so we have options. The floor is ugly carpet with cement underneath, and we have options there too. The ceiling is standard ceiling tile and I'm not sure if that can be removed or what can be hung from it for fire reasons. We'd also not like to put anything permanent down.

Thanks, I appreciate the help.

Online platform for PhD students?

SNWidget — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 19:45:01 -0800

What kind of online platform can I use to run a PhD writing/goal setting group? Inspired by one of the ideas in this book, I'm starting a writing/goal setting group for students in my PhD program (music education, for those interested).

The idea is to get together, publicly set short term goals writing goals, and be able to hold each other accountable. I've done this in the small scale (2-3 people), and it works when we can all get in the same room. Unfortunately, as we've decided to expand the group, I'm realizing that getting everyone in the same room just won't work. Because it's an education degree, a lot of people are still teaching, or have families, or a bunch of other commitments that keep them from all being able to sit down together.

So, I need ideas for a web platform that would accomplish this (for people of varying levels of technical proficiency). My lovely wife suggested a Facebook group, but some of the people in the group aren't active on there. Same goes for a Google doc. A listserv was another idea, but I'm not sure how often I'd have to mail out.

I realize that I might not be able to meet everyone's needs. Ideally, it would be visible, but without me having to send out an e-mail every day.

In my mind, I have the idea that people would send me their short-term writing goals, I'd post them, and then I'd send out an e-mail when people have checked in with how they're doing. Or something like that. I'm moderately proficient with the technologies and whatnot, so if you have a solution that involves a bit of tinkering, I'm up for that.

If you have any experience with an online group like this, or know of a good platform for something like this, please help! Additionally, if you've run something like this before, how did you do it without it becoming a complete time suck on your part?

friend or classmate: pick one.

These Birds of a Feather — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 12:02:36 -0800

How do you explain to a friend that working with them as a classmate is like having your fingernails ripped off one at a time? Previously I wrote and inquired about how I can be a better member of group projects. I've been doing much better and my classmates have expressed to me that they really enjoy working with me. Obviously this means a lot to me because as my previous questions will indicate, I have a hard time working with people, regardless of the setting or situation.

Unfortunately I have a new problem: one of my new friends in my grad program is turning out to be a total terror to work with. Though she's fun to be with outside of the classroom, as a teammate she is domineering, judgmental, and goes to great lengths to ingratiate herself to the people in our group so they'll do as she says later on in the project. It's been frustrating as all get out, especially because she's randomly taken a major issue with the fact that I typically get better grades in our classes than she does, and has decided that I "will bring everyone else down" if I'm allowed to work on aspects of our current projects by myself. (?!?!?!)

She even verbally harasses me whenever I suggest or contribute ideas to our group, and actually went so far as to give me the silent treatment the other day when some of us took the initiative to get our group project a meeting place so we could be productive. She's 24! No one else in the group has an issue with me, each has asked her to stop bothering me, and everyone is grouchy because she only attached herself to our group at the last minute when no one else wanted to work with her.

Right now obviously I'm just trying to get through this. The big issue is that this girl thinks she's still being a good friend and coworker to me, and I will be so unhappy if she continues to attach herself to group projects that I'm in. (Our teachers don't assign groups. We form them ourselves.)

How can I explain to her that I would like to be friends only, not groupmates? Her personality is overpowering everything and no one has worked on any of the work because she insists it be done in her environment, her way. I am so embarrassed to even have to ask this question because the juvenile behavior I keep encountering is crazy baffling, and because I am not sure how to even approach this. I just don't feel like I can continue to be friends with her and tolerate her work behavior too.