Describe a time you worked in a group

I would like to talk about a group project that I did at university last semester in my marketing course.

We were a group of four students and our task was to prepare a presentation about a company and its advertising strategy. We chose a famous soft drink company because there was a lot of information available about it.

We divided the work between us. One person collected the information, another person made the slides, I wrote the text of the presentation, and the fourth member practised the speaking part with us. We met three times in the library and we also had a group chat on our phones where we shared everything.

In the end the presentation was very successful and our teacher gave us a high mark. Everybody did their part well and there were no problems in our group, because all of us were responsible students and good friends.

I enjoyed this experience very much and I learned that teamwork is very important for our future careers.

The one worth talking about is a group project that nearly didn't happen, which is why I remember it.

Four of us, second year, a presentation on a local company. The problem appeared in week two: one member — I'll call him K — simply stopped replying. Not rude, not hostile, just gone. And the three of us spent about ten days doing the thing groups always do, which is complain to each other and hope somebody else deals with it.

What I actually did, eventually, was ask him directly rather than about him, and it turned out his father was in hospital and he'd been too embarrassed to say. So we re-cut the work: he took the one piece that could be done at two in the morning from a phone, and we absorbed the rest. He delivered it, too.

It went fine in the end — good mark, nobody remembers the presentation. What I took from it is narrower than teamwork is important. It's that a silent group member is a question, not a verdict, and I'd assumed for ten days that I knew the answer.

I'd like to say I handled it well. I handled it late.