For one of my final modules I am doing a group project. We can choose our teams and find our own projects but I am still wary of working with others. That’s not to say I don’t trust who I am working with, I do, but I know I am going to find it difficult after working on my own for so long.

In a previous life I worked for a leadership management and team development company. Part of the interview process was completing a Belbin questionnaire to discover my ‘type’. Apparently I am (or was at least) a teamworker/co-ordinator. I have worked with teams before at British Gas and I know I can get on well with a variety of people. Also, being a bit older (but not necessarily wiser) I am more outspoken than I was when I was in my teens and twenties so I shouldn’t really have any problems communicating ideas, questions or the like.

So why am I worried?

Because I have got used to being my own boss; working at my own pace - usually last minute unfortunately as I am great procrastinator - and being responsible for myself and noone else. I am worried that I will either be too forward and ‘take over’ or that I will coast along and let everyone else have their own way.  It will be hard finding a good middle ground.

Having said all the above, I do feel that projects such as this are beneficial to graduates - better even than exams - as they show real-life working situations. Exams are a memory test and I have never come across an exam situation in a working environment. Can you tell I hate exams? I have long thought that assignments, presentations and projects (group or individual) are a much better preparation for working life - and isn’t that partly what university is preparing you for?

Working in the IT industry isn’t like working in a box; no matter what you do you will have to deal with people. Either customers, work colleagues, a boss or maybe a subordinate. Even the geekiest geek will have to emerge from his cellar and talk to the outside world once in a while. And this is what university (and to some extent schools) should be teaching alongside the academic stuff - how to interact with all sorts of people in all sorts of situations, preparing them for the harsh world of work rather than enclosing them in the cotton-wool of academia and making them stuff their heads full of facts for a few hours that they will probably forget as soon as the exam is over (I really don’t like exams you know, bet you can’t tell).

So I will work as best I can on this project, I will listen to the team and put my ideas out there for them to consider, I will take on my share of the work and be available when they need help (as I hope they will be for me) and, with luck, we’ll hand in a superb project that will get us really good marks. If we’re really fortunate we will have also learned a bit more about the outside world of work and how to work/interact with a team.