Livre d'Or

In school, I didn't like group work because nobody liked me, so I was never part of the group to begin with, and participating was a doomed endeavour. Possibly teacher input and guidance on working in groups might have helped, but that never really happened. I also didn't have the maturity to see, and nobody would acknowledge, that a school project is not life and death, so it doesn't matter if it doesn't go perfectly or the idea is idiotic.

If I have to do group projects now, like in a French class or something, I've got the skills to find out how the assessment will be done, make sure I show my part to best advantage so I get a decent grade, and not get invested in the project as a whole because it doesn't matter that much. Often it's pretty crap but I've sucked it up because I need the French and the class is free.

In work contexts, again, I've learned how to maximize what I want to get out of something and how to assert when a thing isn't working, and how to get less emotionally invested so as to accept Good Enough in place of Perfect.

These last two are me doinf self-management. I have a feeling that management of some kind is critical to people not getting left out or tormented for trying to participate. If you're trying to teach group-working skills, you have to TEACH, you can't just dump people in groups and expect it to work. If you're not trying to teach that, and you're just short-cutting assessment or something, it's not going to work for everyone plus you aren't really doing your job.