Often, in such cases, the teacher refuses to intervene, telling the students something like they need to “work it out” amongst themselves. Sometimes even promising to fail all the members of the group if they can’t come to an agreement.
When this happens, it gives the non-contributing members a lot of leverage because, well, they didn’t do the work and would fail anyway if the rest of their group members had gotten their way with the teacher. So, the other group members are forced to let the other student get away with not contributing.
Luckily, the student says this was not the case here. The professor, likely seeing the dysfunction in the group, had allowed them to work separately for separate grades.
Likely also recognizing the situation the student now faced, the professor was very available and helpful in the student’s effort to handle the extent of the project without group members to support them.
I also have to give credit to the professor, cause he was really helpful with it, he made extra office hours available just for the class, where he’d be really helpful with every question anyone had, you just had to show up and ask. I even went a bit beyond, researched some extra stuff on my own to improve it further then I could with just the techniques we learned in the class. I hand it in, two weeks before the due date, and promptly forget about it…
But, right before the project was due, the partner came crawling back…
Well, who slides into the DMs of yours truly two […] days before the deadline? Obviously “random guy”.
The now ex-partner attempted to appeal to the student to let him have credit for their work, going for the emotional angle… The student says that the following exchange occurred.
He really lays on the sweet talk thick, wanting to join up for the project. I tell him sorry about that, but I already handed it in, nothing I can do. He asks to look at my project, “just to see, I won’t copy it of course”, to which I obviously refuse, there is no way I am risking being fired from university, which was a very real risk for cheating.
He proceeds to metaphorically bawl his eyes out, telling me he’ll get [kicked out of] the foreign exchange program if he fails this class, and this is already his last chance with his family, so they’ll stop funding his studies.
I told him I have a full time job, cause I have to pay for everything myself, so he can shove his complaints wherever, but in truth, I thought he was just lying.
Predictably, the ex-project member failed the class, and this did end up being his “last chance.”
Well, he did end up failing the class, and the whole reason I am writing this post is because after reminiscing about this story with an old university acquaintance I randomly bumped into at a bar yesterday, he managed to find “random guy” on Facebook, and apparently, he’s been bouncing around sh**y minimum wage jobs for years, so I guess he was telling the truth after all.
But is it really the student’s fault? I think it’s more likely that “random guy” was just a victim of his own actions.
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