Because nowhere else in civilisation do we gather five strangers, hand them a shared fate, and call it “learning.” Imagine if surgeons were assigned operating partners by random draw, one of whom would vanish until the final stitch, then reappear to ask, “So what’s my part?” Yet this is exactly what we ask of nineteen-year-olds, who must somehow schedule a meeting between a night-shift barista, a part-time lifeguard, a guy who has never once opened the unit outline, and a person named “Seen 9:42pm.” The group chat is created with great optimism. Within a week it’s a graveyard of unanswered questions and one lone voice typing “Hey guys, just checking in 🙂” like a lighthouse keeper shouting at the sea.
Then comes the great ritual of the final night. At 11:47pm, the document that was “basically done” reveals itself to be four different fonts, three different writing styles, and a conclusion that contradicts the introduction. Someone named Brayden, who has contributed one bullet point and the phrase “sounds good,” will receive the same mark as the human who rewrote the whole thing in a caffeine-fuelled fever dream. Meanwhile, the group’s only conscientious member quietly absorbs the labour, the resentment, and the slow realisation that friendship is a limited resource. Markers, bless them, cannot tell who did what, so justice is dispensed like a lucky dip at a school fete.
So let us be bold. Let us ban group assignments, not out of laziness (that’s Brayden’s department), but out of a deep and abiding love for fairness, sanity, and sleep. Let universities set individual tasks that reward individual effort, and let teamwork be something people choose rather than something inflicted on them by a randomised spreadsheet. Until that glorious day arrives, there is Slackademics: the board game where you can experience all the chaos, betrayal, and last-minute panic of a group assignment, without it affecting your actual grades. Play it, laugh at it, and then, together, let us finally end this madness.