How to handle team member who is unable/unwilling to collaborate
I am always willing to learn something exciting whenever I do any coursework


Great.


  However, this adventurous mind of mine is risky and can often put my grades in jeopardy. 


Less great.  I am concerned that you are setting up a false dichotomy.  Being ambitious in coursework does not have to involve risk of poor grades.  It is part of being a mature student and researcher to learn how to reach for the stars in such a way that not attaining your full expectations does not result in complete failure but in work which is itself still valuable.  (This is admittedly an "advanced lesson": I have known people who have made it to the tenure-track without learning it...sometimes with grave consequences.)

It sounds like you are getting an assignment -- let's say a coding assignment since I see you are a computer science student -- and planning something much more ambitious than is actually asked of you, even to the degree that the chance that you will not be able to pull it off gives you a bit of a thrill.  But you don't need to work in this way.  With planning -- and applying some insight early on; it's not all grunt work -- you can design a project in which you first complete what is asked of you and then move on to the more ambitious aspects that you are (happily) more interested in.  Coding work in particular is best done incrementally.  If you work on code over a long period of time, it is much more useful for everyone if some of the code that you write can be used (and tested, responded to...) right away than if you write things in a way so that you have nothing that works until the very end. 

So far this advice is just for your own work.  In collaborative work I think you should be clear about (i) what you are definitely going to do -- i.e., what your collaborators can count on you doing -- and (ii) what you would like to aim for in your remaining time (which if you are talented and hardworking, you will almost certainly have).  Also, if you are actually more talented/quicker/have more time to put in, then it is reasonable to use at least some of your leftover time to try to help your collaborators with their projects.  That will certainly go a long way to getting your collaborators on your side and avoiding bitterness.

In general, when you are working with other people you should stop every so often and really try to view things from their perspective.  This sounds almost condescending, but it is not meant to be and it is really a skill: some people are good at putting themselves in others' shoes and others just can't let go of their own perspective; the former are much more valuable team players.  One tip here: would your classmates describe themselves as wanting "an easy way out"?  Or do they have goals which are just different from yours in some way?  Moreover, do they see your flirtation with failure that, in your own words, can often put your grades in jeopardy and think, "Gosh, I wonder whether whoknows is going to come through with what we agreed he would do or come back proud of the fact that he bit off more than he could chew?"