Cassandra Tognoni | Teamwork on our own terms

"Let's just calculate the discount rate and then we can dance."

My Advanced Corporate Finance group minimizes the Excel worksheet and lets loose. It's 2 a.m. in Huntsman and passersby stare. (Yes, it is weird that we're breaking it down in a study room, but it's also weird that you're 19 and pretend you're Gordon Gekko. Chill out.)

This semester, I have finally perfected the art of choosing groups. It was necessary, considering that three of my classes are graded mainly on group performance.

Group work, whether in the form of a finance case or management presentation, is Wharton's signature. In theory, it fosters teamwork and leadership; it's an accurate portrayal of what will happen in the "real world."

In practice, group work is usually nothing like my fun and hardworking finance group. At its worst, group work represents the worst of Wharton.

Either way, it's just damned inefficient.

First, there's the coordination of a mutually agreeable meeting time. This is a perfect opportunity to hear how busy your peers are saving the world . one Accounting Society or Wharton Women meeting at a time.

Then, when you settle on a time, someone's always late. Admittedly, sometimes, this is me ( . because I hate working in groups).

Then there's the battle over the study room's keyboard - or for the particularly uninspired group, the nose game for the keyboard. The controller of the keyboard is the effective "leader" of the meeting; the rest follow the one with the mouse.

This gets especially tense when group members are expected to give other teammates grades for their contributions, like in some marketing and management classes. Everyone wants to lead, yet no one wants to be too overbearing. So there's a stalemate that usually involves everyone casually volunteering with the disclaimer, "But if someone else really wants to, I don't care ... "

The most ambitious person usually gets stuck with the bulk of the work and the rest work tirelessly to seem as if they are working tirelessly.

Or group work is completely split up and you become an expert on one fourth of the project and learn about the other three fourths when it comes together at the end. This is maximally efficient, yet provides little educational value beyond that of doing smaller individual projects and then learning about the rest in class - particularly because someone in your group probably got his part wrong.

And this is all exacerbated when the professor randomly chooses the groups himself. Then you might get stuck with any number of less than ideal group members: MBAs, seniors with jobs, kids taking the class pass/fail, all who don't care about what grade they get; foreign exchange students who can't really speak English; College kids who can't make study room reservations.

Enduring sleepless nights in Huntsman with people you don't trust or respect (or people you can't have a dance party with) can be hell.

Students should be able to choose their own groups. In the "real world," some argue, you don't always get to choose your co-workers. True, but in the real world you also get to choose not to work for a firm that hires huge tools.

This way, it's not bad luck that you're stuck with a bad group and face the consequences of all the work or a bad grade. If you choose to be in a group with that super-cute senior and he ends up not only having a girlfriend but also incapable of calculating WACC, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Wharton kids don't need another reason to be bitter. They are already going to take enough out on the world when they leave.

More than that, working with friends, or at least acquaintances you trust and respect, can transform your entire approach to the work. I'm not the biggest fan of discounting cash flows, and at 5 a.m., I don't care about that A, but I've worked until the sun comes up (literally) to pull through for my group.

If allowing students to choose their own groups can get Whartonites to value something more than their grade, it's a necessary change. And our dance parties can live on.

Cassandra Tognoni is a Wharton junior from Andover, Mass. Her e-mail is tognoni@dailypennsylvanian.com. Skirting the Norm appears on Mondays.

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