It's hardly a controversial thought to have, is it? No one likes group projects. Reasons range–introverted people are traumatized by the command to find people to work with; extroverted people hate when people aren't communicative enough; procrastinators can't put them off, since others' grades ride on them. The most common complaint, however, is thus: 'I always end up doing all of the work.'
Now, this can't be true every time it comes up. If it were, there wouldn't be a problem, because one out of every two people would be doing 'all of the work.' It's more likely that the people who claim to do 'all that' are really doing slightly more than is their assigned role, in order to make up for others' weaknesses. It's frustrating, for sure, but it's a necessary burden of working with other people. We all know this, but the fact doesn't stop us from groaning and dragging our feet every time we need to do anything beyond what is asked of us.
What does it mean, though, that this is such a universal experience? Aren't human beings wired to help one another? If we are, then we should miss no strides in reaching out to make up for another's shortcomings, hell, we should take pride in it (which many of us do, or else we wouldn't complain so vocally about doing 'all the work'). But, for me at least, no matter how much I try to convince myself otherwise, I can't ever click with collaboration. Maybe I haven't found the right person?
Looking at it from a neurodivergence perspective, it's likely that group projects and otherwise collaborative work is especially difficult for those with autism or ADHD. Beyond the obvious observation that any lack of social skills can make a collaborative setting more frustrating for all parties, there's a structure, or rather a lack thereof, that poses a more striking problem. People who are used to working alone, especially those with neurodivergencies that appreciate consistency and structure, can find collaborative work chaotic. It's easy to know exactly what your approach would be for a certain task, but being faced with another's process is disorienting at best.
You might say, 'that's the point! Working with others will help you see new angles of familiar problems.' That's true, to some degree. But it can also make things needlessly hard. For many, telling someone to do a task with others that they can do on their own is to tell them to do it with arbitrary limitations. Now, one isn't allowed to jump in and go about, say, writing a paper the way that they would be able to do naturally on their own, but they must wait and try to decipher a stranger's work process to put out a product that's possibly going to be worse than a solo work because it's been made in a fit of confusion. The positives of collaborative work, I think, only come out with certain combinations, certain chemistries. Otherwise, the only thing that extra people contribute is confusion, busywork, and struggle.
To boil things down to the elephant in the room: yes, I dislike group work. I'm one of the archetypal ones who 'does all of the work,' not because I'm a martyr, or (for the most part) because I'm full of myself, but because I don't have the patience for any other way. Constantly being on the back foot, waiting because I can't do my work until others have done theirs, not knowing what's actually expected of me because no one likes to communicate clearly… every step of the process drives me up the wall. Perhaps, like I said, I haven't found the right fish in the sea. But, for now, I'm going to eye every collaborative project with the suspicion that I'll turn into an emergent leader because of my own impatience.
