Because I'd like castrate a few people right now, but that is illegal and would land me in jail. So I rant, and hope for commiseration.

Group member #1: Is perfect, on time, work complete. I do not appreciate people like this enough.

Group member #2: Handed work in late 3 times. Each time it was missing a gigantic portion of what she was supposed to do. The second time she handed in stuff, I would open the attachment, look at it, headdesk, text her to tell her she was missing stuff, and have her send it again. She sent this same thing 3 times in the space of 1-2 hours, and then I gave up. ****. She also handed me copypasta and then tried to make excuses for it. Who the **** does this. And then she bitches at me behind my back to the other group members, when I have done nothing wrong but try to maintain deadlines and, you know, make sure our project is actually complete. ****.

Group member #3: Claims to have been a former MD in France. Seems to have the knowledge to back this up. HOWEVER. Has handed work in late 4 ****ing times, despite having about 4 weeks before the first deadline to do his work. Claims that his 4 month-old son gets sick the night before every deadline. EVERY DEADLINE. While I try to understand that his situation is vastly different from mine, he had 4 weeks. Former MD, really? I call bullshit. Listed wikipedia as a reference. Seems to not understand the words PLEASE PUT YOUR REFERENCES IN APA FORMAT BEFORE YOU SEND THEM TO ME despite me saying them 3+ times. I very much doubt this whole HERPDERP I WAS AN MD thing, makes no sense.


Alternative red part: TRUST NO ONE.

My recent experience:

1. Sends group instructions
2. Gets response from Derp asking what he has to do
3. Headdesk

I have one:

Last year our tutorial had to do a PBL project/presentation. There was a girl in our tutorial who was never on time, often showing up 2 hours late to class (not just this class, other classes too). Our prof gave the entire three hour class for group time, she shows up with 20 minutes to go. We assign tasks and we agree to meet in Thode at the end of the week at 9 AM to set up our display boards and do a dry run of our presentation. It is 10, does not show up, text her at 10:30 and she says "yeah I'm just leaving Missasauga now." We are like "wtf!?" we don't have enough time to wait because a lot of us had class at 12:30. So because she didn't tell us what was happening we decide to not put her stuff on the board. She shows up at 12 with everything, and we told her that we couldn't put her stuff up because she didn't bother to show up on time she freaked out. She said "you guys are betraying me, I can't believe this." And we say "Well, you should show up on time, we were all here for three hours preparing, you just can't show up when you want!" and her response was: "Well I'm just a late person, and you're going to have to accept that." (I kid you not, this is what she said). In the end, we got 90%, and so did she...

>out of group of 5 people, I show up plus another member, then the other 3 get mad when they don't get full marks.
>hand in 3 word point form notes with source: wikipedia right on the paper to hand into the T.A

Sadly, I've been on the receiving end of this before. For a certain, huge, group project, I fell very ill for the majority of the actual work period, and I contributed essentially nothing whatsoever to the project. I had to haul my sick ass out of bed to for the group meet ups on campus (I have an hour and a half commute) and I sat there like an idiot, embarrassed, with no proper knowledge of the topic and nothing to contribute. Despite the self-assumed group leader being somewhat bossy (not in the rude, bad way), both her and my angelic teammates said nothing, did not chastise me, and gave me full participation marks for the project. I'd have failed the course otherwise. Of course, they did not know this, but still, thank you.

Or is this not the kind of horror stories we're supposed to be posting?

EDIT: Funnily enough, I have an actual 'horror story', one which I really sympathize with now.
NB: My memory of the story may have been warped due to the amount of effort I felt I had put in at the time. Sadly, when I'm working my ass off, I don't get much time to appreciate what others have done.

For my first year 1M03 PBL project, we had to write a paper as well as do a presentation. In a group of four, one group member contributed just under 1/2 of the basic info to the paper. I essentially completed the rest of the essay, having to gather the info for the majority of the paper, verify the other info, and write the entire thing, bibliography and all. I had absolutely no prior experience with writing any form of formal scientific paper, so this was quite a feat for me. The third group member used my condensed form of the essay to make the presentation.

The fourth group member contributed one paragraph of non-substantial information, and then decided not to show up on the day of the presentation. Seeing as I was awake until four the morning before trying to complete everything (again, something very new to me, and something I hope to never do again), I was doubly angry. His excuse, after seeing him about a month later, was 'a family emergency', which I highly doubted. Later on I found out, that he was unable to write the exam (I assume because of that same reason), and due to missing a lot of lectures he ended with only a 2 in the course. Also, talking to him later on, he does sound like a hard worker, and he's a really nice, humble guy.

I guess the fact of the matter is you never really know what's going on in people's lives. Some things you never see coming, and may be totally out of our (or their) control. Sometimes you just have to give them the benefit of the doubt. If anything at all, it'll give you some peace of mind.

EDIT2: And sometimes, you can tell they're a lazy ******* who has no respect for deadlines. Either way, not much you can do.

Originally Posted by Yogurt

Sadly, I've been on the receiving end of this before. For a certain, huge, group project, I fell very ill for the majority of the actual work period, and I contributed essentially nothing whatsoever to the project. I had to haul my sick ass out of bed to for the group meet ups on campus and I sat there like an idiot, embarrassed, with no proper knowledge of the topic and nothing to contribute. Despite the self-assumed group leader being somewhat bossy (not in the rude, bad way), both her and my angelic teammates said nothing, did not chastise me, and gave me full participation marks for the project. I'd have failed the course otherwise. Of course, they did not know this, but still, thank you.

Or is this not the kind of horror stories we're supposed to be posting?

Not really what I was looking for, as you had good reason.

For a first year course, I had a group project where we had to change around particulars and blah blah blah. The end result was one person accusing another of being racist, and the accused person not showing up until the final presentation.

Originally Posted by Amaryll

Because I'd like castrate a few people right now, but that is illegal and would land me in jail. So I rant, and hope for commiseration.

Group member #1: Is perfect, on time, work complete. I do not appreciate people like this enough.

Group member #2: Handed work in late 3 times. Each time it was missing a gigantic portion of what she was supposed to do. The second time she handed in stuff, I would open the attachment, look at it, headdesk, text her to tell her she was missing stuff, and have her send it again. She sent this same thing 3 times in the space of 1-2 hours, and then I gave up. ****. She also handed me copypasta and then tried to make excuses for it. Who the **** does this. And then she bitches at me behind my back to the other group members, when I have done nothing wrong but try to maintain deadlines and, you know, make sure our project is actually complete. ****.

Group member #3: Claims to have been a former MD in France. Seems to have the knowledge to back this up. HOWEVER. Has handed work in late 4 ****ing times, despite having about 4 weeks before the first deadline to do his work. Claims that his 4 month-old son gets sick the night before every deadline. EVERY DEADLINE. While I try to understand that his situation is vastly different from mine, he had 4 weeks. Former MD, really? I call bullshit. Listed wikipedia as a reference. Seems to not understand the words PLEASE PUT YOUR REFERENCES IN APA FORMAT BEFORE YOU SEND THEM TO ME despite me saying them 3+ times. I very much doubt this whole HERPDERP I WAS AN MD thing, makes no sense.


Alternative red part: TRUST NO ONE.

Are you talking about the MEDRADSC 1A03 presentations?

Originally Posted by _Luu_

Are you talking about the MEDRADSC 1A03 presentations?

Yes.
12chars.

I assigned tasks to all members.
Recieved work back from 2 people who did not even do what was assigned. PLUS the english was brutal, it didn't even make any sense. So...did the parts my self, got pro grade.

Lesson: Group projects are a complete waste of time as I can solo it 10x faster and actually do it correct

Don't worry Amaryll, you'll do 1 more group presentation in Medrad 1D03. (and of course more in upper years)

HAVE FUN!!!!!!!!!!

It's actually SO funny that you brought this up because this JUST happened to me this semester.
Group project- We started meeting at the beginning of the month so that we could organize ourselves, figure out which direction we wanted to go etc. 2 members (out of 6) didnt show up to the first meeting. Second meeting, everyone shows up and we divide up responsibilities that are all due in 2 weeks at our next meeting.. Everyone hands in their sections to me so that I can edit. The one guy's stuff is great. too great actually. so I google one sentence... the exact sentence turns up within a scholarly article.. so i pull up the article. EVERYTHING he submitted to me was word for word copy and pasted from the article, and unsourced..plagiarize d. So group member is confronted about it and says, "sorry, just my rough draft"... even though that group member had no intention of handing in something else. the only reason he re-did his part was because he had been caught...

so lesson!!!!= you never know what kind of people youre getting stuck with in group work, so double check a few things before submitting it because plagiarism is plagiarism and the entire group can get in trouble for that.

I'm in a group project right now, and we all decided to email each other and split up the work. I emailed everyone about a week ago and no one has replied. I've tried more emails, calling, finding them in class - nothing. It's due this week. I guess I'm doing it all myself, to make sure it gets done.

Originally Posted by xxsumz

Lesson: Group projects are a complete waste of time as I can solo it 10x faster and actually do it correct

AMEN!

12charsetc

Originally Posted by Kathy2

I'm in a group project right now, and we all decided to email each other and split up the work. I emailed everyone about a week ago and no one has replied. I've tried more emails, calling, finding them in class - nothing. It's due this week. I guess I'm doing it all myself, to make sure it gets done.

If I were you I would do the same thing and go on by myself, but…
… contact the instructor and tell him/her what happened and I am sure they will understand and mark you fairly...don’t forget to explain how it’s the week before exams and you have A LOT of other stuff going on.
All the best