Group work isn't what it's cracked up to be...

ABOVE: a comical representation - badly done in paint but COMICAL nonetheless.


WELL where shall i begin this story. It is indeed a long story with many twists an an EVIL villian that is soooo, well, EVIL!

This story begins a while ago...two weeks in fact [well probably long before that], when our so called group member [We shall call her Mary, whether that is her actual name or not, only three other people and I will know] came up to us during our lecture break and told us she wanted to speak to us. Well her exact words were: "Sarorth, I want to talk with you". So we turn around in our seat and face her, not really expecting anything in terms of what she wished to discuss [see "Comical representation"]. Anyways she begins really aggressively and accuses Jill and myself of being immature and tells us, without allowing us the opportunity to rebut, that we should grow up. She also mentions something along the lines of: "I don't know if it's who you are or just your age, but you should grow up". Okay, so coming from someone who is being passive, if not overtly aggressive-it doesnt count for much. AND not to mention the fact that she was the one who did not make it to our group meeting and emailed us after we had already handed in the work, how are we supposed to incorporate her ideas? BUT in taking consideration the fact that she did have some relevant things to add, we then revised our work to reflect her ideas and told her about this. SHE still got angry at us because she felt that we misled her about handing in the earlier work.

THIS LEADS US TO TODAY'S INSTALMENT...

Instead of telling our course convenor about the confrontation, I decided that I wouldn't let it bother us and see if we could work things out with her. So the next week after the confrontation [last week] things seemed fine, we met and not needing to do any work that week all decided to finish early. Come this week, and things seemed to have reached boiling point [for her]. We had our negotiation [part of our assessment for "offices"/group work for Property law] and our main negotiator didnt turn up, he set his alarm at the wrong time. Anyways so we went on with it and SHE nominates ME to do the negotiation, I hesitated but then said i would do it if everyone supports me in it. So we start, things go great, until SHE decides to take on an aggressive approach but arguing some irrelevant [non-existent] law and refusing to allow the other team to have a look at the Statute. She also kept cutting me, jill and the other team off. That pretty much stuffed up our negotiation and pissed me a fair bit off seeing as she was the one who nominated me to do it.

Anyways we got over that and had to meet today to type up the evaluation for the work. She brings to class her version which she typed up and presented to us. We all read it and then decided that we need to incorporate everyone's opinions on how it went. So Jill types up a new structure and without even finishing two sentences, Mary chucks a spazz. She accuses Jill and myself of dominating the work - all the work in fact. And then in her defence, jill says that we weren't, we were just trying to incorporate everyone's ideas. Mary then goes, "well that's what you are saying, but your actions show me something else"...Hmmm okay - so in typing, Jill is domination. I bite back, saying that it's not up to us to organise everything. WE tried to contact her earlier about completing the work. If she doesn't turn up then she should have notified us beforehand, not a day before the work was due. She then threatens us and tells us that she has a copy of every email she has sent and she DID send an email to ALL of us about telling us her phone was broken. As it turns out-She didn't. Jill checked it and showed her, there was no proof of that email. This argument goes on for a while and then i leave to get the class roll. during my absense i find Mary still going off at Jill - so much so that she upset Jill quite a bit. So on my return, Mary signs the Roll and leaves. Good riddance. Who does that anyways? Just because people don't allow you to dominate doesn't give you the right to walk all over us. You can't have it your way - its GROUP WORK!

Anyways - Jill copped alot of flak during that confrontation. I felt really bad because it was during the period of me getting the roll where Mary decided to go after Jill. Tinashe really couldn't do much - his words fell on deaf ears, she would just speak over him, and us all. The thing that really bothers me is that she is the one calling us immature when she is the woman in her 40's who is being aggressive and won't compromise.

That's all i have to say. I have to deal with this woman being in my class, but at least i can that i didn't resort to her dirty tactics.