This person does not care, does not do his part, is not mother tongue English (speaks and understands, but not 100% fluent). The English-part is not the reason, by the way. He is the “I don’t give a ____” type. I CANNOT change the “partnership” anymore. It is a step-by-step project, where the lecturer wants to see the results. He also works in addition to the studies, so I imagine it will be me who does all the work. I don’t want to be the “snitch” already in the first week/semester. I HATE group/partner projects!!!
Since it is the first week of the project, give him the benefit of the doubt and so some of the work and then assign him some tasks. I guess having an email record of your discussions might be useful.
Good idea above. I think you will, annoyingly, have to get the ball rolling. Divvy up the tasks, email, text, and write on paper what you are each doing. Document it all for the prof. Tell the person politely that due to other obligations, you need to have a firm timetable. Say that you can’t afford to have your GPA ruined, and if you end up having to do it all you will let the professor see all the proof. You clearly have nothing to lose by playing hardball.
Honestly, I hated them so much as well at school. You’ll need to get used to these kinds of people who just kind of suck at life.
Best thing you can do is to break it up into tasks and hope that they do their part. Once, 2 out of 4 classmates decided to bail on me last minute from a group project and I went ahead and wrote about 20 pages in one night…you gotta cover your butt. Sometimes things will be unfair. Life is unfair.
The working world is, unfortunately, mostly one big group project. And often you have no influence over whether the best performers are on your team. Just saying that you might as well get used to it.
My niece had a situation like that in college. She documented what she did, kept an email record of her contact with her partner, and visited the professor during office hours to talk about the project and ask for strategies to get her partner more involved. I think part of the project was critiquing their partner, which probably helped. Her partner was very surprised that their final grades were so different, but they accurately reflect the work that each put into it.
Communicate as much as possible by email. Create a list of things that need to be done each week, pick a couple tasks, and email him to ask if he has a preference about the others. If he doesn’t or you don’t hear from him, email again with the list you’re going to handle. Update him once more with the status of yours and to ask about his. If you think he’s not doing them you’ll have to do them, but you don’t have to tell him so. Unless the weekly results your professor wants to see are via public presentations in class, I don’t see any reason why you can’t submit your work with only your name on it.
Thanks, but the problem is we both get the same grade… Still no commitment by the way…
If you do what was suggested in post 5, you aren’t likely to get the same grade. You’re looking for advice, so try some of these suggestions.
It was stated in the assignment that we both get the same grade, no matter how much one person contributes (or does not contribute). My professor explained this with: “succeeding and failing as a group is important. Both names have to be on the paper!” ALSO, OUR COLLEGE FOCUSES ALOT ON GROUP AND PARTNER WORK.
^Ugh, I had that type of project a couple of times. So bad.
OUR COLLEGE FOCUSES ALOT ON GROUP AND PARTNER WORK; I don’t like it. Apparently, it is their new philosophy.
This is good preparation for the real world, because you will end up on group projects with slacker colleagues one day. But in real life, those colleagues can get fired.
To save your GPA, you might just want to do the whole thing yourself (pretend it’s not a group project at all). It will help you look at it differently if you have zero expectations. If the prof wants to give your loser coworker the same grade, that’s on him!
I’m guessing the classmate is majoring in STEM and only has to take this class for a distribution requirement.
When my wife was a TA many years ago she had to assign a group project and she assigned the groups knowing there would be some that did not pull their weight and took this into account. One group of 4 turned out to have 2 slackers and the other 2 did most/all of the work and communicated constantly how frustrating it was.
I have no idea what grade this group received but the two that did all of the work kept in touch with my wife over the next couple of years. Out of the blue we received an invitation to their wedding. They introduced my wife at the reception as the reason they got married, the work they were pushed into ended up starting a relationship neither would have pursued without the project.
Years later we have received baby announcements, Christmas cards, and periodic updates as to their life since the project. Moral of the story (although probably not in the case of the OP) is look for silver linings, you will never know what and where they are.
My daughter’s school has many group projects. A couple of them have had serious slackers. For both, after a certain amount of time she and the non slacker group members went to the professors. Each time a solution was worked out. Once the prof told each nonslacker to cite themselves for each part of the project that each person completed, thsn the prof grades accordingly at his discretion. Another time one of three members was not doing their part, it was a long term project. This prof told the two to finish the project without the third, gave an extension to them, and said he would handle the third member. Do go to the professor if it is a huge problem.
One of my siblings had a situation like this in college except it was far worse. There was a group of students that she and her partner had to lead and he stalled the work of everyone because he refused to work with a woman unless she agreed to be his assistant. She went to the professor, who was new, and was told basically to give in. She had a meeting with the department chair and explained that if they wanted to emulate the real world then they were failing. Anyone who held several people up from doing their job would be fired. The chair agreed. The other student was replaced as a project manager.
This kind of work is lazy on the part of a professor and can be detrimental to the GPA of students who are carrying the load of another person. I’d go speak to your professor. Are there other sections of this class? If it’s early enough to change professors and others handle the course differently, I’d consider that too. In the workplace, you have the option not to work for employers who aren’t supportive.
This will go one of two ways: You have to do all the work and he gets the same grade or you talk to the professor about what is happening.
- Try in class to set up a time to meet. If he agrees, Email (using official school email) a confirmation of the time so you have evidence. If you meet, write up what was agreed/done at the meeting to both of you. If he is not doing anything, then go to your professor and say "Professor, I am wondering if you could help me. I have been trying to work with X on this project but despite agreeing to meet and confirming what we are to work on a number of time, he has not done anything. How would you suggest handling this?"
Don’t think of it as “tattling”…its a consequence of not doing the assignment.
I assure you that in the real world that if you are at work and are not doing your part someone will go to your boss to talk about it.
Your professor may give you ideas or say tough noogies.
Also use google docs or the like that shows who made changes to the document. You can show the professor later that you did all the work.
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If you are on your own, then continue to ask the other person for input/to meet but do it yourself. If there are any presentations, let him flop since he doesn’t know the material.
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Tell your partner where the file is on google docs. Tell them if they want their name on the project they have to put it their themselves.