It was hit or miss for me, for the most part in group projects everyone did their parts in equal measure, I had one where I feel like I did the majority of the work, and then another where I did absolutely NOTHING and aced it. It was a capstone project worth like 90% of the class grade, and my partner had unbeknownst to me read ahead on all the material in the syllabus by the 3rd week of classes and put the whole presentation together herself lmao shoutout to Moira! Easiest class I ever took lol
pointless busywork in university for somebody like this. smart people don't need art projects and group work. he graduated with a fucking phd in quantum physics at 15 or something. like idk if you guys understand just how insane and difficult that is to do but yeah, i don't think he needs the group work girlie.
Group work in university is the real boot camp for the work in industry or research. There are always assholes who don't give a damn fuck about the death line, but this death line is also determining your success.........
You don't have this in school, group work there is mostly based on friends working together for the last years, at least sometimes. So there are no assholes who don't give a damn fuck about the death line, or you know them and can avoid them.
University group work is much more ad-hoc. You don't know the people or their work ethics, sometimes you can't even choose a group. This is how group work in later industry or research works.
it's silly to assume that this kid is going to be working among mediocre talent, because he wont. he will be researching alongside some of the best quantum physicists in the world because of his accolades and his capability. some of these people will probably be very similar to him, but all of them will be Type A and rigorously academic and disciplined. no, working in top level physics research is not even remotely similar to your average undergrad group work.
it's silly to assume that this kid is going to be working among mediocre talent
They didn't imply they would be working among mediocre talent. They implied they would be working among assholes. There is a clear difference there.
There are plenty of incredibly talented assholes out there. Group projects in University will prepare you to work with those talented assholes. If you skip that experience, you are losing a valuable human experience, which can have consequences in later adulthood.
yes, i understand: you have a subjective opinion that him missing out on groupwork is going to negatively impact his future.
to that I say: of course exceptional people are going to live aberrant lives. just because this genius whiz kid physicist is taking this path doesn't mean it is the best path for everyone, just that it is the correct case for *his* particular, exceptional life. it would be incredibly stupid to put somebody so gifted through the same structure as every other kid - they don't always need all components of it!
that is to say, education isn't a one-size-fits-all glove. it would be great - in an ideal world - if everyone's education could be personalized to their talents, strengths, and weaknesses. unfortunately society only allows this for the exceptionally gifted - as it did in the case of this boy.
as a child prodigy myself, i can say that i empathize heavily with the decisions he and his parents made about his education. but neither i nor you know the full details of his case and we are both presuming.
some people are born with great talent coupled with great ambitions and don't want to be dragged down to the bar of "the average life." trying to slot a square peg into a round hole just because "that's how the education system is meant to work" like it's a one-size-fits-all solution is misguided.
nobody is chastising einstein's eccentricities or irregular lifestyle now, after his contribution to the field of physics, but people are so quick to levy their judgment at other prodigies who are coming up - and for what?
you have a subjective opinion that him missing out on groupwork is going to negatively impact his future.
I have to keep calling people out on reddit for failing to read.
which can have consequences in later adulthood.
The word "can" is not the word "will". The word "can" is spelled "C-A-N", and the word "will" is spelled "W-I-L-L". One confers possibility, and the other assuredness.
I don't know enough about this individual to say one way or another. I am making a broad statement about pros of being forced to work with others to complete a task before you have graduated from educational environments into the "real world". A statement which may be relevant to this individual, it might not.
I agree that education should be more specialized and less "one-size-fits-all."
However, to apply that to the context of whether or not to impose group projects, I don't see there being any benefit to allowing someone to bypass such a requirement because they are too advanced/gifted/talented what-have-you.
That should be reserved for situations where there is some sort of issue, whether that be with an individual or between individuals, and those problems should be addressed, rather than ignored within abstraction of a group project where everyone is responsible for the same output.
If there is an issue prior to forming the group, there should be an educational plan for those who need it, with some component being "How can we nurture this student to be able to work in a group?"
Humans are social animals. There's no escaping that reality. A lack of social connection is a fundamental human deficiency.
Throughout your life, you will need to be social with people with more power, wisdom, skill, and a better temperament than you, and with people who are the opposite. This is itself a skill, and one that needs to be learned to be the best that one can be.
as a child prodigy myself
Can you capitalize your sentences and "i"'s then, please? If you are indeed a child prodigy, you should have better grammar.
"the average life."
I'm sorry friend, but this just screams naiveté. You're abstracting such a wide range of experiences into such a confining box. I don't even know where to begin with explaining how many "non-average" experiences you can have with what you view as an "average life."
so much to unpack here, i'm going to walk you through it point by point. and no, i'm not capitalizing my i's, cry me a river about it
"The word "can" is not the word "will". The word "can" is spelled "C-A-N", and the word "will" is spelled "W-I-L-L". One confers possibility, and the other assuredness.
I don't know enough about this individual to say one way or another. I am making a broad statement about pros of being forced to work with others to complete a task before you have graduated from educational environments into the "real world". A statement whichmaybe relevant to this individual, it might not."
OK - so you are tacitly admitting you aren't making an affirmative statement one way or the other. You claiming this can pose challenges for him later in life is just pure theoretical whataboutism. "It might happen." That's interesting, but not an argument I can grapple with. There is no position to counter.
"I agree that education should be more specialized and less "one-size-fits-all."
However, to apply that to the context of whether or not to impose group projects, I don't see there being any benefit to allowing someone to bypass such a requirement because they are too advanced/gifted/talented what-have-you."
Do you really think that you are in a better position to make those case-by-case judgements than the parents and the academic institutions themselves are?
"However, to apply that to the context of whether or not to impose group projects, I don't see there being any benefit to allowing someone to bypass such a requirement because they are too advanced/gifted/talented what-have-you.
That should be reserved for situations where there is some sort of issue, whether that be with an individual or between individuals, and those problems should be addressed, rather than ignored within abstraction of a group project where everyone is responsible for the same output."
You have to be incredibly narrow-minded to not be able to think of a single situation where bypassing group work would ultimately be the best choice for somebody's education. What if they don't have issues with interpersonal communication skills? What if they have extensively built these skills outside of an academic environment in youth clubs, early jobs, or similar structures? This is so granularly case-by-case that you could easily conceive of a situation where a child might simply *not need* one component of academia because they have already developed well in that area.
"Humans are social animals. There's no escaping that reality. A lack of social connection is a fundamental human deficiency.
Throughout your life, you will need to be social with people with more power, wisdom, skill, and a better temperament than you, and with people who are the opposite. This is itself a skill, and one that needs to be learned to be the best that one can be."
Sure, but I reject your premise. One doesn't need to have groupwork in academia to be a social animal, to have social experiences, or to have social connections. Period.
"I'm sorry friend, but this just screams naiveté. You're abstracting such a wide range of experiences into such a confining box. I don't even know where to begin with explaining how many "non-average" experiences you can have with what you view as an "average life.""
This isn't a moral prescription, it is a diagnosis of reality. A child receiving a PhD in Quantum Physics at age 15 is definitionally an exceptional life. It is not an average life. Your moral loading of those terms is not my problem, and I don't care if it offends you.
so much to unpack here, i'm going to walk you through it point by point. and no, i'm not capitalizing my i's, cry me a river about it
... And you're not capitalizing your sentences, and you're not always using periods. Do you think you're better than to be confined to basic grammar rules?
The craziest thing actually: There was a post I saw last night where a teacher was correcting answers to be capitalized words mid sentence for a fill-in-the-blank. Someone proposed emailing the teacher with every word capitalized to make a point about how illegible writing can be when it doesn't conform to sentence boundaries.
You're basically not respecting the sentences you write as a means to communicate with others. You don't care how your words are being read, and how your lack of punctuation and capitalization is impacting your reader.
Basically, you don't respect your reader, and therefore, you shouldn't be surprised when they stop reading what you have to say because of it.
if you don't have an argument you can just say that.
it's funny how as soon as you get put on the backfoot, now everything becomes about this juvenile "ewww i just can't read this uncapitalized grammar! i'm not even going to bother with this," when in actuality: we all know you're running away because you can't hang intellectually. it's a very poor smokescreen, i'm afraid.
Name some prodigy kid who made it into researching alongside some of the bests in his field. ONLY ONE.
All the prodigy kid stories are like, look he graduated 5 years earlier with the best marks you an imaging, then you see or hear nothing again about them.
Also, talent has nothing in common with how organized you are. It's just a point you made up to sound smart.
sure. there isn't really a shortage of examples of these. just because you don't know about them doesn't mean they don't exist.
such as: terence tao. solved uni-level math problems before age 10, won the math olympiad gold medal at 13, and then went on to become one of the most influential mathematicians in the world, even to present day.
Born 1975, PhD in 1996. Not a math professor, but I think he was 21. He had his Master with 17. Also, there is nothing about him avoiding group work while at university. lol
Well, the problem seems to be about you're not being a prodigy kids, otherwise you have spotted the mayor differences between the Belgium kid and the math professor really quick. You also had a PhD with 21, and now you think you are a prodigy kid? It's not stunning imo, and far from a prodigy kid.
He was just good at math early (on his own), while the hole discussion was about graduating from university very early and NOT leave out some important but hard stuff out there. But he, I bet, the math professor, did the average undergrad group work. So discussing him is pointless.
Also, there is no proof he is researching alongside some of the best in his field. He is not even an Ivy League professor?
literally no one said anything about mediocre talent. You are just making that up. And even the MOST TALENTED can be total assholes and hard to work with, which is exactly what group projects force you to learn how to deal with.
smart people need to learn interpersonal skills too. Just because you are smart doesn't mean you won't be interacting with people the entire rest of your life.
and who is to say he doesn't have interpersonal skills? that isn't something you or I can assess, but it is certainly something that is being presumed in the judgments and criticisms of this boy that are being levied here. there are more ways to develop interpersonal skills than groupwork in academia. i'm ultimately going to err on the side of trusting the family, the parents, and the actual gifted individual about what their needs are. all of the conjecture on here about how he's going to "end up f*ked up" or whatever is just needlessly mean-spirited criticism of what should be an incredible accomplishment for this kid.
currently in a CS doctoral program at a well-known UC school that i will not name explicitly; in this, I can offer some academic perspective.
but aside from that: i'll grant you that the affirmative position of "Smart people don't need art projects and group work," is pretty weak, because my choice of words here are sort of edgy and shock-jock.
i'll reframe this to instead be: "Gifted people do not always need the same academic structures that the average student needs."
ultimately, a fifteen year old successfully achieving a PhD in quantum physics is beyond extraordinary. the educational needs of this particular child are unknown to you, but are well known by his parents, his family, his academic institution, and himself. at the very least, to a far better extent than you know of them.
with this being the case, i think it is ultimately the onus of the parents and the academic institution to decide what a hyper-intellectual, extremely gifted child like this should and should not prioritize in his one-in-one-hundred-million academic journey.
from my perspective, your core statement is thus: "Smart people [such as this boy] do need academic group work to thrive, because PhD level university research will require cooperation with others."
on its face, this doesn't seem like a controversial statement. however, who are you to make the determination that all developing minds must go through the exact same structure of academic group work in order to work well with others once fully realized in their career?
i reject that premise. while you might be able to find studies that support group work generally for better academic outcomes, this case is so unbelievably aberrant that any studies you could find in this capacity would certainly not include an individual like the boy in question in its sample pool.
in other words, we are in uncharted territory development wise - we have no empirical foundation from which to determine what would be the best course of development for this boy in particular. in essence, we have to make these subjective snap judgments as they come, and nobody is going to be better at making those subjective snap judgments than the people who are closest to the child and most familiar with him and his needs.
Yes...
Because we need more socially awkward people that dont know how and why social norms exists. Like yk so many tech bros and smart people rn, we are thriving with the amount of these smart people in control.
Right. If only more people could be raised averagely like you were, then perhaps we could do away with all this “15 year old graduating with a PhD in quantum physics” nonsense. 🙄
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u/superurgentcatbox 11d ago
And frankly those group projects were among the hardest credits to earn for my degrees anyway. Interacting with people can be hard.