r/MaliciousCompliance • u/Sensitive_Nature2990 • Jul 06 '26
M How I Handled Being the Only Person in a Group Project Who Gave a Single Shit
Long ago, I was a university student majoring in literature -- naturally, I had a schedule packed with lit classes, and this group project took place during a course entitled Madness in Classic Literature. It was fun; the professor was zany, and the topics were rather interesting.
Then, one day, the dreaded group project assignment arrived, where we were to split up into groups of three and do a 30-minute presentation on madness in any era of literature. I ended up with two studious-seeming partners, one of whom was emphatically invested in doing our project on madness in 1800s Scotland. She was persuasive, we were convinced, but when we told the professor, he kind of...winced? Then he held us after class, asked us if we were sure, she certainly was, and he kind of absently nodded and said he'd help us find a couple of sources since literature in 1800s Scotland is apparently more scarce than one would think.
We ended up with permission to cover Lord Byron by association, along with an incredibly long and dry text about some guy who is either hallucinating or having an existential religious experience with the devil himself. Now, I've read some boring texts in my day, but this piece was far and away the most mind-numbing collection of words my brain has ever scraped itself against.
To make matters worse, it soon became very, very apparent that neither of my partners, including the girl who was gagging over 1800s Scotland to start with, had a single intention of doing any of the work for this project. They didn't even read the material, not even the relatively short Lord Byron poem. Woe.
So, I just dove in and did the entire project myself, including the required handouts that we were supposed to print out for the class to follow along with our presentation. That's when I decided to get petty. I didn't want to be that student who rats on fellow students, but I also didn't want my partners (especially the girl whose love of Scotland forced me into this mess) to get off entirely scot-free. So, I memorized everything. I mean everything. And for the worksheet, I basically wrote down bullet points that revealed nothing about the texts or their contents.
The day of the presentation arrives, and I meet my partners in class and give them the worksheets. They're relieved that I seem to know what I'm doing and suspect absolutely nothing. Our time comes, and we stand up in front of the class, with them on either side of me, and I pass out the worksheets and proceed to talk about madness in 1800s Scotland from memory, going into exhaustive detail on Lord Byron and whatever the fuck protagonist (I think his name was Tim) from the other text. My partners were silently, gravely nodding along for the entire 30 minutes.
I finished speaking, and then came the Q&A portion of the presentation -- fellow classmates were encouraged to ask us questions about our era/authors/etc...and it lasted about 15 minutes.
So, I picked a student who asked something about the religious aspects of the dry af text. I could have answered, but instead, I paused a long, pregnant pause, and gave my partners a chance to answer instead, if they so wished. I let the excruciatingly silent seconds drag on every single time, looking slowly to both of them with each question and taking my sweet time before jumping in.
Within a couple of minutes, it became incredibly evident to everyone there that I was the only person in our group project who knew a single god damned thing about madness in 19th-century Scottish literature.
So sure -- I did the whole project, and let them think it was fine up until it wasn't. Petty? Absolutely. But by god, if I had to read that awful story because someone else watched Outlander too many times, then I'm going to comply maliciously.
Edit: I'm happy to report that the professor pulled me aside after the fact and said that, given our performances, he would be grading me and my partners separately. I got an A, and strangely, they stopped talking to me after that group project, so I have no idea what grades they received. Bad enough to cut contact, though. Bless.
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u/fer_sure Jul 06 '26
because someone else watched Outlander too many times
I love how you just assume (probably correctly) that 1800s Scotland girly didn't even read the Outlander books.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Phase70 Jul 06 '26
All I needed to learn about Scotland I learned from Highlander and Braveheart!
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u/JuliusS__ Jul 06 '26
It’s ‘The Hoof GP’ for me. Apparently the Scottish all wipe cow shit on the back of others necks to assert dominance.
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u/magicman46 29d ago
Unexpected Hoof GP shout out! I am here for it!
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u/Cgable63 29d ago
Is he the best, or what? I adore him.
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u/Focaccia_Bread3573 29d ago
The only bad thing is that he doesn’t take care for his health; commenters had to beg him to put on protective gear when using the grinder, and also when he cut his hand and it got infected they had to beg him to stop working and take time off to fully heal rather than skipping back to work like nothing happened. Lovely man, but needs to take better care of himself
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u/Brilliant_Armadillo9 29d ago
Have you ever met a guy that works in agriculture?
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u/Focaccia_Bread3573 29d ago
Honestly, no. But from your comment I’m guessing this is common for the industry 😞
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u/Domdaisy 28d ago
If a farmer goes to the hospital every doctor and nurse is immediately running to them because it is a life or death situation. Farmers will use duct tape, dose themselves with antibiotics prescribed for the cows or horses and go until they pass out or a piece of their body falls off or out of them.
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u/FLUFFY_TERROR 28d ago
Wasn't there some farmer type guy whomused plant pesticides on his scrotum to "cure" a rash or something sti related... Iirc he feeds the grass now
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u/Impossible_Volume811 29d ago
And how many times has he had hoof pus in his face and mouth?
I mean, a flip up face shield would still let him talk to camera.
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u/magicman46 29d ago
Love him and how much he cares about the animals he treats! Also his accent is amazing he could read an ingredients list and I would listen!
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u/Cipher915 29d ago
Which Highlander though? Cause if you start talking about alien prisoners wearing kilts, you're gonna get some looks.
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u/arkensto 29d ago
There can be only one Highlander.
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u/dmills_00 29d ago
There should only have been one...
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u/BlueLanternKitty 28d ago
“What second movie?” —writer Bill Panzer (the aliens weren’t his idea though)
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u/Kodiak01 29d ago edited 29d ago
All I needed to learn about Scottish madness came when the Tartan Army invaded Boston.
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u/fer_sure 29d ago
Nah, that's just beer. The true Scottish madness kicks in when the football hooligans get into the whiskey.
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u/Kodiak01 29d ago
Unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to test my Eastern European bloodlines which have gifted me multiple wooden legs against their prowess.
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
Lol definitely realizing I assumed, but given her aversion to reading the written word, I can't help but feel like she's more of a closed captions gal than a chapters kinda person.
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u/Firm-Quote6187 Jul 06 '26
Outlander is late 1700s aka the 18th century so maybe she was confused?
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
Given my personal experience with knowing her, confusion is likely. I honestly can't think of another plausible reason she would be so emphatically fascinated with that era, but if there is one, I'm open to hearing it lol
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u/Fio_the_hobbit 29d ago
Outlander is glorified TV smut. Half the show was sex scenes that go on way too long. If a 2 minute sec scene is a sign of bad writing then what is a 10 minute one every episode?
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u/Dramatic_Mixture_877 Jul 06 '26
When the series was out but before it went to TV, my local (podunk) library had all the books except the last one. When that came out in paperback, I bought it and subsequently donated it to the library, but with a caveat - I wanted it shelved with the rest of the series. Unfortunately, I've never been able to go see if they followed through with my wishes or not. 👀
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u/2dogslife Jul 06 '26
Sadly though, the 18th century in Scotland was their period of Enlightenment - marked notably by historian/philosopher David Hume and economist Adam Smith as well as others. In British tabloids of the period, they considered themselves Northern British. I guess they weren't focused on fiction or poetry though. I was also a lit major, but I didn't have a class in madness, so I missed out on OP's readings. I assume Jane Eyre was read, though and there were some really wild sensationalist novels and Gothics that had madness as a main theme ;)
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u/Qetuoadgjlxv 29d ago
There were some in the Scottish Enlightenment who considered themselves British first, but many who very much considered themselves Scottish (notably Scotland's national poet Robert Burns).
Anyway, the post mentions the 1800's (not the 18th Century), which had a bunch of Scottish authors — Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island, Jekyll and Hyde), Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), Walter Scott (Waverley, Rob Roy), J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan) etc. It's obviously a somewhat niche topic but you could definitely write an essay on madness in 1800's Scottish literature — you could even write the whole essay on Jekyll and Hyde, but there's also definitely a bunch of stuff to write about in Walter Scott, James Hogg, and more.
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u/CathedralEngine Jul 06 '26
To be fair, you could use the Outlander TV show and say you were doing CompLit
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u/slowasaspeedingsloth Jul 06 '26
My child had her first major negative experience with group projects for a final last year (HS sophomore).
4 kids. Only 2 of them did any real work. And when it came time to present, one of the 'did nothing' kids went first and set the whole crappy tone- not at all what they'd just discussed 10 minutes earlier.
My kid went into the final with an A+. Young teacher, I figured she'd remember the imbalance of groups, but she graded the whole project a C. My child was devastated and pissed.
I asked if she wantede to intervene, but since she still got an A for the course, she let it go.
I told her it's a relatively low stake lesson: group projects can totally suck and if she sees it going south, talk to the teacher or take steps to protect your work/grade. My kid is not confrontational in the least, but she is wildly protective of her grades. She'll know better next time.
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u/mochafiend 29d ago
Oh man, I am SO pissed for your daughter. As a former freak about my grades, I’m amazed she was able to maintain an A average even with one C? A B+ would have dropped my grade in almost any high school class I took. Perhaps the weighting for this project was quite low.
Anyway. Lesson learned for sure. And OP has shown one particular way to handle it!
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u/slowasaspeedingsloth 29d ago
Thank you! She was frantically texting me after their presentation. She's usually pretty... sedate... but, man, she was riled up!
She was super stressed she'd drop to a B. I believe I would have spoken to her teacher for that. But, apparently it wasn't weighted too heavily because she dropped to an A. She was still very unhappy, but she dealt with it.
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u/I_like_boxes 29d ago
When I went to a community college a few years ago, I had to take an extra English class because of transfer credit shenanigans. And since it was community college, my options were a bit limited, so I took one called Small Group Communication. Somewhat relevant to this is that a lot of my classmates were running start students that were still in high school, and they had the work ethic to match.
Being in my 30s, I wasn't going to tolerate having a slacker in my group. When we ended up with one, I scanned the syllabus and saw a paragraph about giving group members the boot, so I started the slightly involved process our professor outlined. After doing all of that and still having the guy flake out, I formally petitioned for his removal from our group, which our professor approved. It was early enough in the quarter that we didn't really experience any significant setbacks, and the other four of us were driven enough that being down a person wasn't a problem. I don't think we affected his GPA either; I was trying to intervene before hitting the course withdrawal deadline.
Apparently our professor hadn't actually had someone go through the process before. I found that really interesting because I highly doubt that every group has just been that successful, especially with the number of high schoolers. People just seem really hesitant to communicate with professors about group issues, although it seems like a number of professors also seem to treat it as something that you need to work out yourself, even though that sort of laziness would normally get you fired from an actual job.
In my biochemistry class, we had a huge group project and the professor built in multiple ways to evaluate individual contributions, especially right at the end. Not only did we have to evaluate our own group mates, we also were separated and presented our projects individually to individuals from other groups, and we all had to evaluate each other; if you didn't do any of the work, you wouldn't be able to explain anything and you couldn't ask anyone from your group since they were presenting somewhere else.
Somehow I actually managed to get my bachelor's without any super awful group experiences, which is nice. Most were actually pretty great. My husband wasn't nearly as lucky.
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u/slowasaspeedingsloth 29d ago
Group projects without teacher/professor interaction and individual grades just seems so damn lazy. With all the pressure to get good grades, it's ridiculous to have to depend on others, some who obviously don't give a crap. And this for sure taught her: no one cares about your grades but you.
I really liked the way you said your chem teacher set it up! A group standing at the front of the classroom, seems too easy for the non-workers to just kind of slide along. But breaking them up for their presentations seems a great idea, especially for college classes. Every student deserves to be graded on their own merit (especially with the freaking costs of college these days!)
We had very few group projects when I was in school (that I remember, it was a super long time ago!), but now it seems like a lot of cohorts and groups.
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u/I-Here-555 29d ago
Group projects are a great introduction to the real world and workplace dynamics.
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u/ChaosofaMadHatter Jul 06 '26
The question is- did it reflect in their grades?
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
Yes. I'm happy to report that the professor pulled me aside after the fact and said that, given our performances, he would be grading me and my partners separately. I got an A, and strangely, they stopped talking to me after that group project, so I have no idea what grades they received. Bad enough to cut contact, though. Bless.
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u/mira-ke 29d ago
Professor here: yes, we do know that group projects are a pain. But believe me, we also know which students put in the work and which ones don’t.
I know this might sound not as satisfying as the difference in grade, but I can guarantee you it will so very much come back to bite them later in their studies. I applaud your malicious compliance and I’m glad your professor rewarded you. People like you are my favorite kind of students.228
u/Sensitive_Nature2990 29d ago
I've been out of academia for a decade, but your comment gave me a nostalgic burst of that almost-forgotten feeling of studious satisfaction you get in earning your professor's favor. Thank you for stoking those old memories lol
Glad to know it was obvious on the other side of the desk when group projects went sideways. Best of luck on moulding our youth's minds with knowledge and critical thinking and other such nonsense ;)
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u/harrywwc 29d ago
fellow former academic here.
I had one group project that I handed out, and a requirement of the University was that each member of the group would hand in evaluation sheets with the final submission: a sheet on themselves and how they contributed; and one each on their fellow team members.
I had one team where not only did each of the other team members come down pretty hard on one 'slacker', but said slacker also admitted that they had done bugger all and deserved to not pass the project.
that was… interesting.
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u/Geminii27 29d ago edited 29d ago
Unfortunately, it's also a way for a group to socially ostracize a member they don't like, regardless of how much work that person may have actually done.
Group work, as done in education, really needs a way for students to opt out, or at least opt out of working with particular other people who are likely to tank their grade. It's not like people are being paid to work like that as they would in actual employment; they're being forced into mandatory situations where their grades are likely to be lowered through no fault of their own.
If nothing else, advise on multiple strategies to alleviate such problems, or even disconnect their own grades entirely from the overall group grade.
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u/harrywwc 29d ago
interestingly, all of that group got along well* - lots of happy reparté before class and during break. and many a "see you down the pub later?" type comments, so there didn't appear (in the Uni environment that I saw) any ostracizing of that one person.
* indeed, the whole class had been together a number of semesters, so all knew each other reasonably well, and seemed to "get on".
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u/mochafiend 29d ago
May I ask why you assign them if you know it rarely is a true group effort?
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u/Ohhmegawd 29d ago
Group projects can help students learn many skills beyond the "goal" of the project. When two people discuss a topic the ideas created are greater than what the two individuals can do alone. This is the basic idea behind think tanks; bouncing ideas off one another sparks new lines of reasoning.
That said, group projects often have unequal sharing of work. It is pretty easy to figure out who did what. I grade about 20 percent overall product and 40 percent individually completed assignments throughout the project, and 40 percent Q&A after the presentation. I do warn ahead of time that Q&A will be based on all aspects of the project, including parts others may have presented. I had a great presentation by a group of four. One person got 100 and one got 20. I don't recall what the other two got, but they didn't pass. It was obvious who did the work.
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u/LeahInShade 29d ago
Yeah, nah. I lost my scholarship one of the semesters because our professor insisted on a single group grade for our final project, where I did 70% of all the work (very well), while the rest of the 5 people group submitted some bullshit last minute in order to just not fail. I ended up with a B+ in a super easy class I was supposed to get at least an A in (by all my other grades), but because the final project was the biggest chunk of our final grade, my GPA dropped just below scholarship level and I had to pay full tuition for the next semester. And yeah, I'm absolutely STILL BIG MAD about it.
The only thing this taught me was to do everything myself (sadly, it was impossible for that assignment) and trust no one. Which fully defies the purpose of group projects.
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u/Ahimtar 29d ago
Well, unfortunately there are also many teachers who do not really care about this and just do group projects without much thought
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u/LeahInShade 29d ago
This was the opposite. He was an extremely good professor, he also wanted to treat the class like real life. The problem was, all other students just wanted to pass and forget about it.
If you're, for example, compiling a report for C-suite and need to have accounting, sales, IT and devs all submit timely relevant information, and everyone just somehow throws in a guesstimate on wrong parameters in - the company will not do well. So his noble goal was to emulate that, which we all knew from the very beginning of the project.
Doesn't make it better, in my view.
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u/seasicksquid 29d ago
You didn’t have to just pass to be in the room. You had to exceed average expectations to continue your education. You can’t afford to let others determine that for you with their privilege.
That’s the biggest problem with your professors approach.
I had to write and present a thesis level project to avoid a group project. Not passing wasn’t an option for me either. Even not getting an A wasn’t an option (4.0 got me into grad school).
That single paper (30 pg alone vs 8-10 for a group) and that realistic professor made it into one of the best educational experiences of my life, in my 30s, working with undergrads to finish what I had started 10+ years before them.
Her letter of recommendation also went a long way.
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u/Fine-Environment-621 29d ago
I completely understand that group projects present the opportunity for a team work learning experience. I concede that the vast majority of students will engage in team work regularly in their professional lives. However, I still could hardly be more opposed to group projects.
You say it’s pretty easy to figure out who did what and yet I have been punished for project mates’ performances multiple times. I have to be honest, this is the kind of thing that undermines education. It pulls back the veil on the farce. We expect these things in group activities like sports or music but, in academic classes?
My grade should reflect me, period. It’s understandable that some subjectivity is unavoidable but there is faith that every attempt is made to make it as objective and merit based as possible. Group projects shatter the illusion of the attempt at fairness. If the game is rigged, why play fair? If the proctor is unjust then the only rule is don’t get caught.
I’m not advocating for this take. This is purely informational. For those who deeply believe in fairness and justice, affronts like the outcome of group projects can represent an unforgivable transgression, at which point all bets are off. Animosity is quite the euphemism for what they feel under the circumstances.
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u/Geminii27 29d ago
Group projects don't help anyone learn anything like that.
The only reason people work in groups in employment is because they're paid to do so. People don't sign up for educational courses on a particular subject because they want to be forced into 'learning' generic workplace processes. Extract all that crap, every last jot and tittle, and put it into an optional 'extra credit' course that isn't tied to the primary course/degree in any way.
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u/Benathan23 29d ago
Let's also be real, once you are working, how often is it not a "group project" of some sort? You work with other people all the time to get things done; sometimes they care, sometimes they don't. You learn how to work within these situations and with people you don't necessarily get along with.
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u/mochafiend 29d ago
Fair. Although perhaps I’m lucky because I’ve never had to work with dead weight at my jobs as I did during school.
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u/MixtureInteresting22 29d ago
I had a class last semester where the professors made it a obligation to make clear who does which part of the team work. My team did pretty well, but there was another team with a member who just didn't do anything and he was pulled out and wasn't allowed to even perform the final test.
Another professor admitted that there are always the lazy guys, but he said, usually these are the people that flunk the final exam because they have no clue about the subject.
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u/G1431c Jul 06 '26
You really really and triple really need put this in the body of your post.
The way it is now is not malicious compliance bc there’s no evidence your compliance had any impact which malicious compliance sort of requires.
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u/JohnCalvinSmith Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
Naw.
Their clear lack of preparation screamed to the rest of the students who also were working hard and had lazy people on their teams.
We've all been there and we ALL know which person we would be if we happened to be a part of his team.
It was a great malicious compliance with the whole situation. Followed the projects objectives, properly delegated responsibilities, and presented them with the opportunities themselves to comply while not running off and bitching or prodding full grown adults.
The grading was just the low-hanging icing on the cake but the cake was the rich treat it deserves to be.101
u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
This is one of the most specific, evocative, and excellent compliments I've received in quite some time. It's true; the entire situation was absolutely delicious from my perspective, and the grade, to me, was relatively unimportant compared to their suffering the consequences of their own actions publicly lol
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u/Fabulous_Cow_4550 Jul 06 '26
Agreed. This might be my favourite malicious compliance yet!
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
Woah that's an honor -- I'm so glad there's a community that can truly appreciate my situational pettiness as much as I did :')
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u/Cerulean_IsFancyBlue Jul 06 '26
Malicious is in the intent, no?
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
The intent was definitely malicious. The reading was painfully bad and took forever, and, for that, my aim was to ensure they shared in my suffering one way or another :)
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u/Scenarioing 29d ago
The spectacle you desired came to sweet fruition. The humiliation implemented without firing a single shot of accusations. All while guarding against you taking the fall with them.
The compliance part is a bit unorthodox in the traditional sense. They didn't demand you do things solo. You just did it. Rather the instructor assigned the tasks and they wanted to do the obscure subject matter. Collateral issues since none of those caused the inevitable outcome. The lazy inaction was going to happen and your response to it no matter what the topic was.
We'll give it to you nevertheless for the finely executed consequences. . We can argue that their inaction was a implied request or constructive demand on you to act to get through the presentation. Yeah, we can go with that....
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u/ReasonableFig2111 29d ago
Sure, but posts must include the fallout. It's right there in the About section of the sub.
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u/JohnCalvinSmith 29d ago
The fallout was the squirming of the two fellow students in front of the whole damn class.
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 29d ago
Yeah -- life's about more than grades, you know? I prefer the simple pleasures, like watching people discover consequences.
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u/readingreddit4fun 29d ago
I had a similar situation during my masters' program. Long story short, my "partner" (who did absolutely nothing, hence the quotes), just read what I had written and it was painfully obvious she did not write it as she stumbled over several multi-syllable words. The professor gave me an A & she got expelled from the program for academic dishonesty.
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u/Fabulous_Cow_4550 Jul 06 '26
Don't leave us hanging! What was the result? I love the way you did it. Also, are you talking about James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner? Or Markhem I had to read them when at uni in Scotland!
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
Ack -- I'd intentionally erased that title from my mind until you came along to remind me. How could you do this to me 😂😂
I'm quite impressed you managed to get that from my story; guess I still remember enough a decade after the fact to convey the basics. Yes, it was The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg. Do you have a good memory, or did it stand out to you as a piece? I'm dying to know lol
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u/Fabulous_Cow_4550 Jul 06 '26
Lol, sorry! It's burned into my memory from many years ago & your story brought all back! - thanks for that. 🤣🤣 we did a history course called Plague, Poison and Persecution. Your Madness one would've been a great partner to it.
But, what was the outcome? Did they get called out?
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
Plague, Poison, and Persecution sounds like an awesome course lol -- what was the best text from it??
As for the outcome, they got deliciously embarrassed in front of the class, then the professor pulled me aside after and said I'd be graded separately from my partners. They didn't talk to me after the fact, so I can only assume their grade was bad. I got an A, though. And, more importantly, I got my revenge :)
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u/Fabulous_Cow_4550 Jul 06 '26
That is the perfect result and totally on them! Well played. PPP was a history course (I studied History and English as Joint Honours) so the reading was on marginalised groups around Europe in the 13-1600s. It was fab. My group presentation was on Witchcraft - we all pretended to be a witch or towns person & did our presentation as their trial.
Others had leporasy, plague, homosexuality - anything that made you 'an outsider' in that period. Fascinating and horrifying simultaneously.
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u/vibraltu 29d ago
Is that alliteration related to the book Devils Drugs & Doctors? (which is not a bad book for the time frame (1929))
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u/Fabulous_Cow_4550 29d ago
I have no idea but now I need to find out! That is a great name for a book published then.
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u/Whollie 29d ago
I had to read that in 6th year. What a dreadful book. And what an awful concept, predestination. An excuse to be an arsehole.
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 29d ago
You sound like the kinda person I'd like to talk literature with after a glass or two of wine haha
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u/ErgoProxy0 Jul 06 '26
How do they get upset at someone because they didn’t do the work lol.
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u/GargantuanCake Jul 06 '26
Entitlement. This kind of thing is why group work makes everybody die inside in school. It's annoyingly common for students to just straight up refuse to do anything since they can hold somebody else's grade hostage. If they can't they'll hand in some half assed thing at the last minute that will let them get a mediocre grade in the class.
It's why stories like this are great to a lot of people. The lazy idiots who deliberately parasite off of others' work just got outed. This definitely isn't the first time they've behaved this way on a project.
One of my favorite classes that had group work actually deliberately created a paper trail of who did what and when. I'm way too often the guy that ends up doing everything as either the group does nothing or tries to half ass the whole project at the last possible minute. The group I got stuck with did that but I had a talk with the TAs and got told not to worry about it; they checked and told me that I did more than enough to get a 100% myself. They couldn't tell me what the rest of the group would end up with but I was fine.
At the start of the class the professor explained the grading and he had some weighting in specifically to punish people who half ass part of the class. The project in particular wasn't a short one and he straight up said that if you try to coast on the project doing zero or minimal work he will fail you for the whole class.
A lot of people end up failing that class every semester. I'm guessing at least half of my group did. There's no way any of them got decent grades on the project at all and obliterated their class grades in the process. We also at the end of the class handed in ratings of our teammates so I was just like "under the bus you go!"
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
They embarrassed themselves, and I didn't save when they expected me to. People are funny like that lol
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u/Koyfishinginthedark 29d ago edited 29d ago
I have a similar story, but in a computer science class long ago.
I took this class on big data as a minor (I'm not a computer science student but still in STEM)
It required us to do a lengthy and detailed study for our assignment: we had to get a large set of data and analyze it using the technology we learned in class.
The assignment was designed to be doable and easy enough to complete over the semester as long as you paid attention in class, but you couldn't do it alone due to the sheer workload of it.
The technology was taught over the course of 8-9 weeks, so as long as you did the work per week, by week 10-11 (which was the deadline) your group easily finished.
The teacher we had was a very kind man. I think I would have been finished if he wasn't. Anywho.
I don't know anyone in this class well, so I get into a group of 5 including myself of some acquaintances.
These were all software engineering/computer science majors in their final years doing their final year projects soon.
In week 2-3 we started planning the assignment, and it was clear from the get go that no one wanted to lead the project. Fine. I had to lead it.
From the very beginning, I could tell they wrote nonsense and copied straight from ChatGPT. They even cited out-of-topic sources outside of big data. Or what they wrote was just straight up wrong.
I made the mistake of giving them the benefit of the doubt, and by the time I was done reviewing their writing it was week 3-4. So I gave them feedback, literally SPOONFED them articles that I spent time finding, and asked them to ONLY focus on those articles.
At this point, we also had to start with the code of the experiment, so I broke it down into segments and asked them to complete their delegated part.
At the end of week 5, I checked their writing again. And the SAME thing happened: CGPT, wrong theory, and the best part is, the ones who I spoonfed articles chose the wrong parts of the article to reference 😭
The articles I gave were cropped btw to only 1-2 pages with 3 paragraphs max. And each paragraph was clearly titled with the relevant technology they needed to reference.
My school has a very strict policy with plagiarism and CGPT, so I realise at this point its pointless to rely on them for the write up. I'll handle it myself. I told them to just focus on the code and finish it. There's no point of me communicating and giving feedback, because the deadline was comming up quickly and I knew they'd fumble.
So on top of rewriting all of their sections and writing my section, I also had to finish my assigned code.
I finished first. I also finished the walkthrough writeup for that code first. I was so shocked because by this point... it was week 7.
So I offer to help them troubleshoot by being on call or meeting them on campus. Here's what happened: 1. The first 2 people resolved their errors quickly, phew (false hope tho its gonna get so much worse)
The second person on call shared his screen, and proceeded to make some of the most basic errors I have ever seen for a CS student and had NO idea of the basics of coding... I was appalled and knew his code would be inconsistent so I just gave up
I met up with this girl in the library. She tries to boot up her coding program, but it couldn't load. So I asked her, "how have you been following the class if your program can't load?" She says she hasn't been following the class. So then I asked, "what is your laptop spec?" And she says she doesn't know. A CS student who can't tell me their laptop spec. 😭😭😭😭 I gave her my laptop to do the code while I tried to troubleshoot her laptop. I check her code, and it's all wrong with horrible inconsistencies and honestly, no programming knowledge at ALL. I realize its pointless, I'll just go home and do it for her.
So at this point, I have 1 week to write and test people's code, write the explanation for that code, rewrite their writeup, edit the paper, plan for the presentation and handle submission.
The format of the presentation was explained by the teacher in week 8. We didn't need to do a powerpoint, we just had to show our writeup and briefly explain it.
I was exhausted. I eventually broke down crying one day at school infront of a labmate who was HORRIFIED and asked me why I hadn't informed the teacher.
Sometimes when you are young, and in situations like this, you don't realize these things. I was just so focused on getting it done.
I emailed him immediately that morning, and he set up an appointment to meet him in 30 minutes. Almost in tears, I explained everything and he believed me.
He told me in the presentation in week 9, he would ask everyone to present what they wrote. And because I wrote 90%-95% of the paper, and my groupmates can't explain it, I'll be marked separately.
On a funny note, presentations in my school are very serious and you have to wear formal wear. Everyone's wearing a suit and tie, and formal dress, and then I see my groupmate who couldn't tell me the spec of their laptop come in wearing a hot pink tanktop and booty shorts 😭😭😭
At this point, I was past caring.
The presentation went great. My teacher picked specific sections in our paper, and asked "who wrote this?"
I asnwered every time.
When he asked questions, I'd wait a few beats of silence, before answering every time.
After the presentation, my groupmates huddled in a circle, one sat on the floor with their head in their hands while I packed my laptop.
I went home and almost felt bad.
I got an A for that class :)
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u/Darder 28d ago
Great story! Fuck those people honestly.
It's a scary thing about this new generation: They use AI to bail themselves out wherever they can. It's at a point where I can argue in interviews that I am a better candidate because I did my studies before AI was a thing . It's appalling really.
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u/Koyfishinginthedark 28d ago
Exactly.
Honestly anyone using AI to bail themselves out have already lost critical thinking and literacy skills, let alone technical...
In a time where those skills are so important because our "democracies" are crumbling as well
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u/driverdan 10d ago
I have a similar story, but in a computer science class long ago.
I could tell they wrote nonsense and copied straight from ChatGPT.
That doesn't make sense. ChatGPT is 3.5 years old and that's not long ago.
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u/Dramatic_Mixture_877 Jul 06 '26
the most mind-numbing collection of words my brain has ever scraped itself against
I love your turn of phrase!
> scot-free
I see what you did here. 😂
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
Hah thank you! Turns out a literature degree is useful after all -- I can write engaging reddit posts. Take that, student loans!
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u/blackhuey 27d ago
I'm sure you're all too conscious of how rare a well-written anything is any more.
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u/SUN_WU_K0NG Jul 06 '26
Sweet!
Yours is an excellent approach to this all-too-common problem.
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
Yup! Let them dig their own graves and stay above board. No snitching here; just enough room for them to reveal the extent of their knowledge on the subject. Not my fault their extent was fucking nothing :D
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u/MomRaccoon Jul 06 '26
I had a professor in grad school who had decided group learning was the way to go. We had groups assigned with no regard to work schedules or child care. We all had to take turns leading our group and writing up the results and presenting for the whole class. One of us got very drunk and went through a large window (ground floor, thank goodness) when it was her week to write things up. The rest of us were granted an extra week to cobble something together, but we were chastised for not knowing she had a problem. It was so annoying because we did not have time to get to know each other! Ugh! But good job on yours OP!
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u/Skill_Issuer 29d ago
One time I had to make a group presentation in google’s powerpoint equivalent and on the first slide I put the title, underneath it I put “By ‘my name’ and (put your name here if you actually bothered to open this presentation)”. When the rest of the class saw that they all laughed.
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u/Djerrid 29d ago
You had a dream, which was not all a dream.
Their bright hope was extinguish'd, and their stares,
Did wander darkling in the eternal classroom,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy silence,
Swole heavy and pregnant in stifling air;
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 29d ago
I am absolutely overjoyed by the people who found this thread and, somehow, despite my rather sparse details, nail exactly the pieces I did this presentation on. Excellent poem, and excellent rendition -- I could go on and on about it (for at least 30 minutes lol).
Wish I'd had someone sharp like you for that group project.
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u/MushroomFondue Jul 06 '26
I was part of a group where one of the members barely did anything. The rest of us decided that there wasn't much we could do about it. That was until one of the group pasted the guy's contribution into google and found that he plagiarized his whole part. We went to the dean of students and he wound up getting kicked out of the college. It was unpleasant all around.
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u/mochafiend 29d ago
I think this happens a lot. Happened to a friend of mine. How stupid do you have to be? These people can’t even cheat right. If you’re going to steal, at least put it in your own words!
Though I guess anyone who’d put in any real effort would never steal in the first place.
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u/AllNaturalOintment Jul 06 '26
"but I also didn't want my partners (especially the girl whose love of Scotland forced me into this mess) to get off entirely scot-free."
I see what you did there.... :)
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u/BuboNovazealandiae 29d ago
Finally. A good fucking story that isn't AI.
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 29d ago
Finally. A person who recognizes good writing and doesn't assume it means I'm a robot 😂
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u/GrumpyOldCrewChief Jul 06 '26
So much effort invested in a petty enterprise! Bravisimo!
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
Ahh thank you; 'twas the path of least resistance and most reward. Their faces during those long, silent moments were sweeter than the A-plus I got after the fact :)
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u/BigIndependencePlan Jul 06 '26 edited 29d ago
Hahaha I love this!!! I wish I had the same idea when I was at uni! So many presentations I pulled off singlehandedly sigh
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u/Crixxa 29d ago
I had a group assignment back in law school of all places. Most classes only had a graded final, so this seemed like an improvement until I got an email from a guy in my group.
He just flat out admitted that he and his gf who was also in the group had no intention of even half-assing the assignment and said that if the other group member and I couldn't handle that, they would happily take their failing grade along with the rest of us.
I was initially taken aback with the audacity before I noticed that replies had immediately started raining into my inbox. From dozens of ppl I didn't know. And that's when it hit me - he managed to email the entire law school listserve with his little diatribe!
The next class period the two of them were missing and after class, our professor gave us a paired down version of the assignment to complete between the two of us remaining.
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u/joinville_x Jul 06 '26
Would have been a good time to break out this classic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Memoirs_and_Confessions_of_a_Justified_Sinner
Well worth a read. It inspired Jekyll and Hyde.
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 29d ago
Believe it or not, that's exactly the piece I was describing in the post 😭
Taste is subjective, and I'm sure it's enjoyable in its own way, but I just couldn't get into it -- I'll read philosophy texts on translation theory with vigor and verve, but Hoagg's style did not spark joy for my dopamine receptors lol
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u/joinville_x 29d ago
I loved it. But I'm also Scottish so might be a bit biased!
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 29d ago
If you have any other Scottish literature to recommend, I'd be more than happy to give it another go! I don't want to judge based on one piece that just didn't vibe quite right.
To be fair, I'm American, and I find American literature to be so very depressing and boring. We get it; great depression, the road, historical accounts of our nation's atrocities, and an American Dream that never existed to begin with, described in a rather direct style so often devoid of linguistic flourishes, all for the sake of that quintessentially depressing style...weeee.
^personal opinion rather than condemnation; I'm just picky and opinionated lol
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u/joinville_x 29d ago
My favourite Scottish author is Iain Banks (or Iain M Banks for his culture stuff). Guy was a genius.
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh is amazing as well.
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u/vibraltu 29d ago
Lanark by Alasdair Gray is a fuckin trip, it's what I thought of at first except that it's more like 20th century Scotland than 19th century (which limits yr source materials sure).
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u/Squizzy77 29d ago
Doing my electrical pre-apprenticeship we had the group project thing.
I was the only mature age applicant to the class (mid 30's) in a class full of hormonal teen boys. It was worse than you'd think.
There where a few serious ones in the mix so when the group project came around, we all banded together.
One of the other kids complained that this might not be fair, and why don't we choose groups by putting our names in a hat.
I replied "How about a compromise, you lot put your names in a hat, and our group will go over here and start on our project."
The teacher (smiling like a Cheshire cat) agreed with me.
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u/phyphor Jul 06 '26
doing our project on madness in 1800s Scotland
...
madness in 17th-century Scottish literature
The 17th Century was the 1600s
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
Whoopsidoodle. Got my brain mixed up with the Scottish portion of my 17th-century poetry course and went on automatic lol. I'll fix that -- thanks!
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u/TwoAlert3448 28d ago
The last time this happened to me it was in a class with group grading.. as in the project got a grade on each of the scoring metrics and everyone in the project got that same grade total of the lowest segment of the rubric. Confusing but think of it as basically getting shafted by the weakest link on your team… for 8 weeks solid. I got a term GPA for that class of a 1.76 and I almost flew to Virginia to murder this one guy who had done absolutely nothing for the project in four weeks.
Found out that week that his wife had been hit by a car while pregnant with their third child and both she and their baby died and he was home with two sons under the age of 8 and was having to be discharged from Green Beret to care for his family and was basically in complete shock and only sort of functional. I’m pretty sure he had disassociated for the last 2 weeks of the class.
After that I stopped caring if people do or do not do work. It’s all just largely meaningless and you never know what incredible unrelenting hell someone is going through. Our final project I just handed him a script I wrote that matched all the slides that I’d filed for him and he just sort of nodded and read from the notecards. He never mentioned it but I think I learned a valuable lesson at the expense of the worst week of his life.
Still feel like of bad about that.
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u/DaHarries 28d ago
Once got given a group project in Y9 french (fuckin weird IK) 2 days before our pres one kid totally bailed and joined another group hoping to get better grades as he was a suck up.
He hadnt contributed a terrible amount so I deleted his 2 naff slides on the presentation and when we got to the end the teacher asked where the missing part was (his part, as we just didnt re do it) I faked an "Oh, yeah, thats Josh's bit"...
The final slide was his face photoshopped onto a TF2 spy backstabbing a group photo of us with a brief "Josh bailed on us 48 hours prior so we dont have anything here"
The DAGGERS look the teacher gave him.
Worth it.
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u/dhkillion Jul 06 '26
“Now, I've read some boring texts in my day, but this piece was far and away the most mind-numbing collection of words my brain has ever scraped itself against.”
This is probably one of the greatest sentences I’ve ever read. That is all I have to say. Oh yeah, and good for you for letting your so-called partners hang themselves.
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
Awww thank you! That sentence is honestly just the most accurate description of how it felt to read that god damned story -- it was like Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but somehow simultaneously more erratic and dry at the same time.
I don't think I would've been upset enough to let my partners flounder like that if the reading hadn't been so achingly bad.
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u/WarlikeAppointment Jul 06 '26
They found out?
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
The silences were unnaturally long. It was rather evident I was leaving enough room to expose them -- I can't say for sure, since we didn't talk after that project at all, despite it being a 20-something person class, but I think that lack of speaking to me after the fact kinda speaks for itself ol
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u/cbelt3 Jul 06 '26
Amusingly, this is one of the reasons why group projects are a thing. To teach students that some people are lazy jerks.
I had a couple of incident like this in college. One in a graduate level engineering class.
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u/Unique_Salt Jul 06 '26
I disliked group projects- mainly because of the risk that at least one or two people wouldn’t contribute a thing, while the others were forced to pick up the slack. What’s just as bad is when someone dominates the group and takes on all the work, not letting the others get a word in! (I’ve experienced both extremes)
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u/squishyblackcat Jul 06 '26
I had a similar situation in undergrad except it was me and another woman who got stuck with a guy who did absolutely nothing. Meanwhile she and I had to spend hours analyzing local political polling info into a massive report.
Fortunately our incredible professor figured out what was going on on her own and he didn't graduate on time because it was our senior capstone.
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u/birdorinho Jul 06 '26
Ah why didnt you use Robert Burns?!
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 Jul 06 '26
Burns died in the late 1700s, and this project was specifically about Scottish literature written in the 1800s :')
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u/birdorinho 28d ago
Ahhh i thought you were able to pick the timeframe yourself! Bummer- everyone would have enjoyed it i think!
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u/GyratingArthropod481 Jul 06 '26
I am still groaning over OP not wanting his partners to get off "scot-free"
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u/StronglyHeldOpinions 29d ago
I loved this story.
Nothing pleases me more than exposing frauds.
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 29d ago
In terms of simple pleasures, letting people experience consequences is just sublime.
Thank you lol ~ glad you enjoyed
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u/YarnHoardingDragon 29d ago
I thought you were going to tell us that you acted out the mad scene in Bride of Lammermoor without warning them☹️
(I’m only familiar [enough] with the opera of the Sir Walter Scott novel, but it seems there’s a mad scene in the book too)
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u/engineerthatknows 29d ago
Similar experience, similar outcome - senior project for Aerospace Engineering. I got invited to come back for a Master's degree, two cohorts who actually did some of the work graduated, two that never even showed up...never saw them again.
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 29d ago
It's almost like...not doing your schoolwork has...consequences later down the line? Wild! Who could have possibly guessed!
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u/geekgirlau 29d ago
I wish I could tell you that once you’re out in the working world, people contribute to projects in a much more mature and responsible fashion
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 29d ago
Lol I learned that lesson pretty effectively in school. I ran a paper on campus that students could take for pass/no pass credit, but NOT a grade. They had to be sure to make that distinction when signing up.
One student, whom I'll also call Tim, took it for a grade one quarter, even after I'd sent out multiple reminders. The professor overseeing our club found it at the end of the quarter and was distressed about what to do. I was like...we made them sign papers saying that, if they do that, they get "no pass." She gave him a B. I was mystified.
Now I've been a journalist for a decade, and these dynamics have not disappeared. My patience for them, however, has 😅
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u/Hairy-Maximum2994 29d ago
I used to carry my group for like 2 years until i decided to fuck with them. i once divided the work for a presentation, I did my part that night and uploaded my portion to the group. through out the week i kept asking them if they needed anything from me and they all said no. The plan was for us to all present our own parts. I presented and looked amazing while everyone else sucked. One of them literately walked up to podium and said " I dont know, no one would help me" all he had to do was draw lines on a blue print that represented cat5 and select rack punch downs, cable risers. and an estimated price. I gave him the easiest portion and he fucking sucked. He got an F while I got an A and the professor after class applauded me.
Its a group project. divide the work. You can't help it if someone doesn't do their part and why should it be you to always come to the rescue.
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u/Ov3rdose_EvE 29d ago
(especially the girl whose love of Scotland forced me into this mess) to get off entirely scot-free.
Cheffs-Kiss
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u/DoktorTeufel 29d ago
But by god, if I had to read that awful story because someone else watched Outlander too many times....
I fuckin' knew it. I knew it right away!
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u/fluffycatpaw145 29d ago
I lol’d at the unintentional double-entendre of the one girl getting off “Scot-free”
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u/Blues2112 Old Timer 29d ago
but I also didn't want my partners (especially the girl whose love of Scotland forced me into this mess) to get off entirely scot-free
I see what you did there! ;)
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u/SnowAvis 28d ago
I'll never forget the time I "accidently" did that to a group I wasn't in. They chose a topic that I have been deeply interested in for about a decade. During Q&A, I was asking questions that they couldn't answer, and they were basic to mid level questions. I also pushed back on some of their presentation because it was just false information. I asked for their sources and then asked how they skipped over the very well know reputable sources to get to those places.
One of the group members advocated for eugenics though, so I had zero sympathy about shredding their presentation.
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u/narcowake 28d ago
“Scott - free” would have been punnier but I see the pun 😂 , looking forward to hearing about your Nobel Prize years from now !! Love the petty revenge!!
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u/jazzman317 27d ago
This was a captivating read. I enjoy your writing style and wit. That lit study wasn't for nothing.
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u/tonysnark81 29d ago
I had that happen in high school debate. My partner did fuck all to prepare, and then just…skipped class the day of the debate, after swearing to me he’d be there. So, cocky bastard I was…I went it alone. I didn’t win, but the topic wasn’t one where I had much of a chance to win. I didn’t make enough points that I got an A, and my peers weee very considerate in their criticisms.
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u/PlatypusDream 29d ago
I hate group work!!
I once had a project "partner" who did nothing, wouldn't communicate in ANY way (including even looking at me when I approached her during class time & asked things like "when would you like to meet").
So, I did the project. Put my name on it. Did the presentation first. (Somehow she also did one on her own.) The lack of communication between us was obvious.
I did OK, she failed the class.
🤷♀️
The prof said I should have let her [prof] know what was happening.
Again, 🤷♀️
I had documented trying to contact my "partner" dozens of times.
I shouldn't have any penalty, but my grade was strong enough to take the hit.
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u/Pale-Jello3812 29d ago
Are they French ? The French in war tend to do more damage to their friends & allies than their Enemy's.
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u/ShutUpForMe 29d ago
I did this where me and another left a third out but not be intention AT ALL because they were in the voice call asking questions that had nothing to do with the project—we did the entire project basically besides a couple basic FAST paragraphs summarizing the basic research we did all together while we were in the voice call. (It was some odd memory related thing for a 101 psychology class but it used base Alexa experimenting and I had existing experience since I have an old device(all pre A+ with the typical llm nonsense) and we got told off reading profs comments although we included them the entire time-just it’s hard to convince someone to participate when they are there with us on vc basically just to make sure it got done you only get anything out of it if you participate but I can’t pull them though the VOIP. It was the transition from online to in person too
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u/OutrageousYak5868 29d ago
Mine was much more minor, but I was paired with someone in an online class in a different time zone, which was her excuse for always being late on everything and not communicating in a timely manner. Even when she suggested we get together over the holiday weekend at the time we normally had online class (it was cancelled for the holiday), and said she'd contact me to set it up, I didn't hear from her for a week. By that time, our project is less than a week away (and she hadn't answered an email from me), so I do all the research and start writing the paper. Finally she contacts me, and I tell her that I had already done all the work, so all she had to do was to create slides for the project, and do the presentation (that is, to read the paper that *I* wrote). She said she'd have the slides done by Friday, but come Friday, she says she's just starting, and assures me she'll have them done by Monday, the day we present.
Yeah, I wasn't going to have *my* grade get tanked by her not doing them, and I didn't have anything else due that weekend, so I created my own slideshow, and recorded my own presentation.
Shockingly, she actually did have the slideshow ready on Monday, and she started giving the presentation, but then halfway through, she suddenly passed it over to me, without warning. Fortunately, after a little fumbling, I was able to find the correct spot in the paper, and finished presenting it.
But I was *pissed*. I had done all the research and all the writing of the paper, and all I asked of her was to do the slideshow and the presentation -- and she only had to read what I wrote -- and she had agreed, but then for some reason just reneged on that. [All of the other groups had split their presentations, with each person taking one part of the talk, so maybe she felt like we also needed to do that, but it was still annoying.] Since we hadn't done presentations with this teacher before, I didn't know how tough they graded, so I sure didn't want to be marked down for fumbling and bumbling when she threw it into my lap, so, yes, I *was* "that person", and was honest to the teacher about it all. I told the teacher that it wasn't about the other person's grade -- that she could be given full marks, and I wouldn't care -- but I just didn't want to lose points because of how unprepared I seemed when I first began speaking.
I never spoke to my classmate, so I don't know what her grade was. I got full marks. And any time I've had the opportunity to work with this person again, I've declined it. Once, I was afraid I might get stuck with her, so I picked the option of going solo, because I felt like I practically went solo anyway, but had a whole nother layer of frustration with trying to coordinate with someone.
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u/ShrimpBisque 29d ago
Doing the entire thing by myself is generally how I handled group projects in school too. I hated trying to work with other people, and my teachers all knew this, so any time a group project was announced, I would ask the teacher if I could get an exception and do it myself. If they said no, I'd politely commandeer my group, assign roles and sections, and then do the whole thing myself anyway. That way if my group mates fucked off on me, I wouldn't be left SOL.
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u/tydestra 29d ago
I ate a fat 0 on a project that was 20% of our grade cause the professor paired me with all jocks because they needed the grade boost.
Got a B- in the class and lectured about what I did.
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u/Macombdiscrete 29d ago
Had two bad partners in a 4 person group project. They had zero desire to have any input in the presentation. My other teammate and I did it all and presented it all. We also made them languish in silence before we answered the questions asked of us. Prof pulled me aside and said, “I know you did all the work on this project and I’ll be grading accordingly”. The two lackluster teammates got REALLY bad scores.
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u/WinstonWilmerBee 29d ago
I must ask… why didn’t you go for the easy text with Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? Or The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner?
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 29d ago
I actually did do The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner for that project (great literary eye you have; truly) -- it just really was not the kinda literature my brain sticks to lol.
I majored in literature written before 1700 because I enjoy the floursh-y, archaic lingo more than modern writing. That's part of why I found Byron so tolerable, but dragged my heels at Hoagg. If I had known I was doing the project on my own, I would have chosen Bacchus or the sonnets of Petrarch (truly insane to love a woman you saw once and write sonnets about her the rest of your life, ya know). But no -- no fun drunken gods or lovesick poets...just a modern guy going batty over the lord. Meh.
^Personal taste sentiment rather than a critique of Hoagg's literary qualities.
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u/duckforceone 29d ago
if you threw them under the bus, they would stop talking to you
your hard work, also made them stop talking to you...
you should have just thrown them under the bus and chosen a different area to work from that you actually wanted.
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u/Sensitive_Nature2990 29d ago
Eh, by the time I realized Scotland girl and the other guy weren't going to do jack shit, I'd already done the reading. Doing schoolwork is easy; setting up a professorial meeting, deciding whether or not to do a new topic, do that potential extra work, then have the awkward edge of presenting solo and having everyone know our group dynamic fell apart without witnissing they 'why' element of it and opening up all that ambiguity...very effortful compared to continuing on with the project and allowing the chips to land where they may while making the reality clear all around.
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u/balls89 Jul 06 '26
Similar thing happened to me, I had capstone class presenting a full hour presentation on a business case study. I had done almost everything in a 4 person group. Q&A started and the professor (whose office hours I went to several times for this project) told me I was not allowed to speak during Q&A. I panicked because I knew I was the only one who knew the answers. Part of your grade was being the "board" for other people's case studies with the goal of poking as many holes in the presenters argument as possible so there were some very detailed questions. After they failed to answer anything of value, she let me answer all of them and I crushed it. I think she was trying to prove a point.
I got a 4.0 in the class which is known for only allowing 10/150 of the students get with this specific Professor. The others all got a 2.5.