Groupwork is essential for a good research. Very few people have been able to work well in isolation. Working in a group facilitates exchange of ideas and brainstorming and leads to better results. But sometimes it may be challenging. It frequently happens that some group members do a lot more work than others. This cannot always be prevented - sometimes you will simply work with someone who will not have the same priorities. For instance, you are working together with another student on a class project, but he/she is happy with a B and will do sloppy work. The best approach in this case is to talk to this student, and, if this doesn't work out, to talk to the teacher and adjust the project description so you can work on pieces alone and be graded separately. Otherwise, you'll have to grin and bear it. However, many times a timely discussion of the problem, clear work division and frequent checkpointing can help you work smoothly in a group. Here are a few tips to help you along:

• Do your best to work well within the group. OK, maybe you think that other group members are a bit annoying, or lazy, or stupid. Don't give up on them. Try to work out the problems and you may get to be very good friends by the end.
• Divide the work clearly and make sure you understand how it will fit together and everybody is happy with what they've got to do.
• Meet frequently with your group members. Don't just divide the work and meet a night before submission to merge things together. It won't work. Ideally you want to merge things as early as possible so you have time for necessary adjustments.
• If your group members don't work as fast or as well as you think they should, discuss this with them. Chances are they have some problem they cannot overcome alone. Help them out. Although it is tempting to take things into your own hands and do all the work, negotiating this with them instead can bring many benefits. First, they will learn how to do this themselves. Second, you will have more time to concentrate on your own work. And third, your partners may suprise you and do a really good job if you just help them out a bit.

Working in a group for a class project prepares you for collaboration in your future research projects. Collaborating with other students and other research groups (companies, universities) can be very fruitful. No one of us knows everything. Rather than learning, say, a lot of discrete math because you need to prove some things in your protocol, it will work better if you team up with someone from a Mathematics Department, and delegate the work. You may get acquainted with lots of researchers and industry people when attending a conference. Don't hesitate to initiate collaboration if you spot that you have common research interests. You can do this without your advisor and inform them when you come back. They will likely be happy and support this initiative.

Short point summary

• Seek collaboration
• Divide up responsibilities within the group and do a lot of checkpointing
• Discuss any problems that may arise, work hard to resolve them