Everyone knows the insurmountable feeling of dread when your teacher says they’ll be assigning you to groups.

Group work should be easy; more people are working on the same proble

m and it should be more efficient to solve and finish. Then why do we hate it so much? I will be relating my experiences and woes of group work I have encountered in high school. My teacher makes everyone take a test to sort out abstract and concrete thinkers into groups, in order to apply a theory that work will make the class run smoothly and provide easier to learning. However, the theory of compatibility and the reality of human interaction are two very different things because of four kinds of people, in my analogy, we will call them: the monks, the kings, the peasants, and the knights.

The monks, when they join your group, are undergoing their vow of silence. Although they are probably more rational than any other member of the group, they share the least amount of input. While the group is stumped and arguing, you watch the monk, sitting there, obviously having the answer on the tip of their tongue, but they sit in silence. The only time they speak more than they would is by the force of either a teacher or the king.     

The king is the member that always needs to be right. They will argue their belief even if everyone agrees, and punish those who don’t. I say belief, because more than half the time they are misinterpreting something from the book. The pretentious leaderly nature of the king will blind their judgment and ruin workflow with their constant bombardment of already answered questions and arguing. Every time the knight, monk or peasant tries to bring a new idea they are harassed and berated with petty arguing that will ultimately make them reject their own idea, only for the king to state the same idea later, but as the correct answer, never giving the other group member credit. The king is usually the second slowest member of the group, it takes them not nearly as long as the peasant to fully understand the project, but just long enough for them to get irrationally angry with the knight and the peasant. If the king were to pick what game to play with the group it would be the blame game; as the king is almost always affiliated with the member of the group that blames their slowness on their tired, job-having lives. “It’s harder for me because I have a job,” and “My life is harder than yours because I have the universal fundamental aspect of performing labor for financial security that everyone has or will have in their life.” And when the kings are not blaming their misfortunes on their jobs, they’re blaming the group. We as a group are not trying hard enough to argue with them, I mean, teach them. Arguing, for the king, is like a little kid playing dress-up, they always want to do it, and especially in public. It doesn’t matter what you say, they have to argue with you. Nevermind facts, or logic, their word is god; they are the king.         

The peasants are the slow thinkers. The peasants typically go along with whatever the kings say, but not without slowing everyone down to explain their dim-witticism. For example: Imagine the group discussing whether dogs bark, the knight would agree and say dogs bark. The king would ask the knight why they think that and begin belittling the knight for having past knowledge of a subject. The monk would sit in silence. The peasant would then interrupt everyone and disagree saying it’s impossible for dogs to bark because only trees grow bark. The group would then need to explain that we are not discussing the physical material, but the sound that is emulated from any species of dog. The peasant would try to listen, agree, shrug their shoulders, but never understand.

The knight is the average person. In medieval times, the knights work underneath the king, and of course, had no direct interaction with the monk. Knights don’t necessarily have to be the good guys, or have the romanticized affiliation with being the “knight in shining armor;” sometimes the knight wears peasant’s clothes, takes a vow of silence, and/or rules for a day.

My simile of medieval castes and modern high school group work doesn’t always fit the mold and isn’t always negative. However much I hated being and working in that group, I still learned. I only cried once in the counselor’s office about it, so it couldn’t have been that bad. So the next time you are put into groups, think about who you are, are you a king, a monk, a peasant, a knight or do you just not give a s**t?