For the last few years, I've always ended up getting horrible team mates in class. Whenever had a group project, I would inevitably get a really slacker team. Now, I admit I am not the most dedicated of students - however these people make me look like a rocket scientist. It has been a matter of great frustration to try and figure out why I get such horrible groups. Even when I went into a class advertising that I needed "motivated students looking for an A" for the group, I still ended up with slackers. It came to me a few weeks ago why I kept getting bad classmates.

In high school one of my teachers outlined the information she had gained about some of the psychology behind how people choose their seats in classes. The obvious being that the good students sat in the front row eager to be as close as possible. The bad students often sat on the outlying edges and towards the back. The intraverts who sat atop this motivation bell curve would cluster in the middle.

This isn't strictly true. It's true in many instances and is a good general principle but I, for example, am an exception. I would sit towards the front or in the middle, but due to my size and concerns of blocking the view of other students I sit on the outer edges usually towards the back. As such, I end up among the sea of the less motivated students.

So when it comes time to pick groups, unless the professor assigns groups, I end up with those around me who are not of the highest caliber.

And when I made my post to a class mailing list concerning that I was looking for motivated team members, what I ended up with was people seeing someone who was obviously driven for a good grade and so they could in theory use my motivation and leech off of my work in the class.

This is an untested theory as it only occurred to me during this semester and I haven't had a chance to see if sitting in a more forward position would help me to gain a better group - we'll see next semester.

On a related topic, one of the things which my teacher laid out for us, was the concept of power seats for nonverbal communication. The theory being that there are five main lines of sight for a teach or professor. Those are set off at basically 0°, 45°, 90°, 135°, and 180°. And if someone sits in those line of sight they are more likely to be called on as well as to be noticed by the teacher.

Inversely she gave an example where a class banded together, occupied those power seats, and trained a professor to be more interesting through the use of nonverbal communication. When he spoke energetically and was interesting they gave good body posture and projected interest by leaning in and remaining still. When he began reading from the book or fell into a monotone sort of voice the students leaned back and began to grow restless in their seats.

Whether the above story is true or not, I don't know. But don't doubt the power of good body language and nonverbal communication.