DescentBB

This semester, I grouped together with 2 of my friends for our Network Support and Services class. We knew the history of one of the guys but decided to give him a shot. Our lab's consist of installing Linux, Windows 2003 and Novell. Then get them all talking with SMB and NFS file sharing, proxy, firewall, gateway and email server. Then document it all in a professional report. My friend was put in charge of the documenting.

Five weeks after we started, no documentation was done. So I drew up a template to follow. We have spoken with him 4 times verbally and sent an email. The email I sent with some very personal information stating what i was going through in my life and I was still able to pull my weight. He was like "wow" didn't know this. This weekend was the last weekend we could do it. It was due this morning at 9am. In thursday night, her drew up the reports and let us look at them. To put it mildly, they were horrible. Even a th grader could write better stuff. We then told him to go home and spend the weekend re-writing them.

He ended up telling us he couldn't work on them on Saturday because his parents wanted to have him go to a RV show because they are selling their house and getting an RV to travel. We were like "wtf". That is more important this school? In the end after he re-wrote 2 of the 5 labs, we had to do them ourselves. My other buddy and I spent the entire weekend typing them up and formatting it.

Phew, wow, all that just to get to the point. Today, we had a meeting with out teacher. He told us to email him all the emails and IM's we had with him. Then he would formulate a response, email it to all of us and see what this person would say. In the end, he may fail the course because of this because you need to pass the lab portion to pass the course and if you don't contribute you get graded acordingly.

It sucks that after 4 semesters a friend would do this. We even told him our friendship and his marks would suffer but it wasn't enough.

Man this sucks. I was stressed all weekend and didn't study for a mid term I have on Thursday in CISCO. I have to crash study tomorrow and Thursday AM for it.

Ok, end rant. Just needed to vent a little. Thanks.

Stuff like that is the exact reason I've never been comfortable working on group projects in school, no matter how well I know the other members of my group. When you have to rely on someone else to pull their own weight in a way that can affect your grades, there's a very big chance that you could get shafted for someone else's laziness.

Top Gun wrote:Stuff like that is the exact reason I've never been comfortable working on group projects in school, no matter how well I know the other members of my group. When you have to rely on someone else to pull their own weight in a way that can affect your grades, there's a very big chance that you could get shafted for someone else's laziness.

I suggest you never go for your MBA then. Most if not all of the classes require group projects.

Or have anything to do with software [engineering], since most of the projects will be team based.

I'm still safe, then. I'm a Physics major, and last time I checked, most of my professors aren't what I'd call socially adept. I honestly don't mind working with people, as long as I know they're intelligent and know what they're doing.

Working with people on a team is a good real-life skill to have... but then, in a real job, if someone's not pulling their weight you can get them fired. School doesn't work quite the same way. Most teachers won't kick someone off of a project if they're not pulling their weight mid-semester, and often they won't fail them at the end either.

(Note: sorry about the slight bump.. I've been away for a few days.)

Top Gun wrote:I'm still safe, then. I'm a Physics major...

I was a Physics major, too, but my professor was very fond of group projects, and had us work them as often he could (which still wasn't near as often as some of my other classes). The majority of the time, this was fine, as most of my fellow group-members were consistent and quite capable, and one of my group members and I were always competing for the top exam scores.

However, at the end of my senior year, I found myself being the one who let a classmate down. For reasons I won't get into right now, I had to drop my senior project, (a cooperative project dealing with lasers) which I was working on with a good friend. I hated it; the feeling of letting him down really bothered me for a while. I don't think it hampered his grade because I went to the professor and explained my situation, but he wasn't able to complete the project on his own, so I still feel like I let him down in some way.

I guess I'm saying it's about accountability. Ideally, if someone isn't "pulling their weight", they should do what they can to make sure that it doesn't affect the grades of the others in the group.

Lothar wrote:...in a real job, if someone's not pulling their weight you can get them fired.

Yes, if you can document it, and if that person's superior will listen. Unfortunately, sometimes one doesn't see the issue arising in time to properly prepare for any confrontations. I have a close family member who has faced this multiple times; the first time, he couldn't do anything because it was too late to document who did what; and after that, it was an issue of a superior's bias toward a certain lazy employee.

Not that I'm trying to be negative; almost all of my co-workers and superiors have been great. I've just learned to keep my eyes open.

Lothar wrote:School doesn't work quite the same way. Most teachers won't kick someone off of a project if they're not pulling their weight mid-semester, and often they won't fail them at the end either.

or...instead they get the higher grades on projects that YOU did all on your own. Which was the case every single time I ever participated in a group assignment. I'd even come in early or stay late just to finish the damn things and then end up getting a lower grade. Even when the teacher saw me there doing all the work. WTF is that?

Hey, it's fine to work with a group sometimes but its better to know what the hell you're doing and to make sure you cover your ass, even if it means extra work. As much as I'd like to trust the people working with me, If you can't rely on them you can't let them drag you down with them.

Atleast you had the luxury of sorting it out with the teacher Merlin. Maybe if I had gotten the As, instead of Ds (Yeah, wtf right?), that the beneficiaries of my handy work had gotten, I might not have turned into a chronic underachiever.

We have a meeting tomorrow during LAB class. We'll see what happens then. We haven't spoken our partner since that night.

that's a sorry tale Tyranny