The Occasion, revisit

This post, first written April 2018 and updated February 2019, is further exploration of the topic, the process.

As a student, I hated group assignments. I dreaded the moment when a teacher would put me with two or three other students and give us a task to accomplish. I would groan, shoot the instructor a micro-glare, and reluctantly join the others who were equally ‘enthusiastic’. Why did I hate it so much? Was it because every group has a slacker and I hated the imbalance of effort? Or was it the fact that I would have to approach a problem in a way that I was unfamiliar with? Because if a teacher gave me a page of math problems, I could fly through them pretty quickly and end up with fairly accurate results. If I had to answer comprehension questions on a chapter in US History, no problem. Zip, zap, zoop. However, if a task involved more complexity and I had…