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United States8519 Posts
I'm in an upper level Inorganic lab, and so the only writeups are midterm and final lab reports. These are supposed to be massive reports of all the work done in every lab. They aren't that hard to write, they just take some time.
My lab group was the only group of three due to an odd number of people. A few weeks before midterms rolled around I asked the other two group members to submit individual reports and I'd integrate them with mine, and then they could look at the finished product and correct any errors they saw. This was the only realistically feasible way to do this as we did the labs independently more or less, although it wasn't unusual for someone to run a spectra for someone else and give the other person the printouts.
Midterms rolled around and both of them finished their reports on the day they were due. Not really enough time to edit things or integrate them well, since I had classes I had to go to during the day. We ended up turning in three separate reports, although I did inform my professor of what happened.
We ended up finishing the remaining labs with a month before finals. I figured, there's no way this isn't enough time for them both to finish writing up their reports. I even offered to writeup a report for one of them, since I had already written up most of what I needed to at midterms and I finished one fewer lab than they did.
Well, come finals week one of them got his stuff to me somewhat late, but I had other stuff to do so it wasn't a big deal as I wasn't going to work on it until the following day or two anyways. The other? I sent emails to him for pretty much a week straight. He never responded to any of them, although on the last Friday of classes he was like "Yup, almost done." Hadn't heard back from him until yesterday when he sent an email saying something like "I just have to assign the spectra." Okay... whatever. Get your reports done and hand me the spectra.
He ends up sending his report today half finished, not in the proper format, and he still hasn't gotten his spectra to me. This is where I throw up my hands in frustration and scream.
On the plus side, my professor has been pretty understanding and told me "Just give me what you have and tell your lab partner I'm expecting the rest from him" which is essentially the reverse of a get of jail free card for my incompetent lab partner. It won't really affect my grade (or my other lab partner's grade) if he doesn't turn them in, but he's pretty much screwed if he doesn't since you have to pass the lab to pass the class.
I'm still kind of pissed off even with things ending this way. There's really no excuse, and despite having a couple of somewhat hard finals on Thursday and Friday, this should have been a relatively stress free week all things considered. Instead I got to fret about this until just about now. -_-
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shit like this happen all the time in group assignments. i even had a guy who did no work what so ever, only turned up for 2 out of 14 meetings we had and got the same mark as the rest of us. -_- what can you do?
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group projects suck i never act like a dick in those, i always do my share. But this prick has whats coming to him, too bad you had to strewss about it.
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Its a good learning experience though. Shit like this will happen in the real world too. Remember and reiterate such experiences in your future job interviews (you are very likely to get questions along the lines of - "Describe a time when you had a difficult group project and how you responded and what the outcome was").
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Well, it is good that your professor seems to understand your position, because if that weren't the case this would really suck. I don't know how far into school you are (from the terminology and course-load it sounds like your a junior or senior level undergrad, but thats just a slightly educated guess.)
Anyways, I am a sophomore undergrad and recently had a group project in which we designed and presented a building. It was a 3 person group as well, and it came to the end of the project and we had 2 days left and just 3 small parts left to do. Since the 3 parts were essentially plugging already known or previously figured out numbers into equations, and were more or less independent from eachother and the project as a whole, we each chose one and agreed to do them and know the answers for the presentation. All went well, until at the end of our presentation, when one member of the panel of people grading us asked what the overall cost of the project would be. I and another group member calmly turned to the third member, who we thought had the answer, to see a blank stare back in our direction. Even though it was a small calculation, essentially adding up the costs that we had figured out along the way with a few extra parts laid out in the manual, it was a very important part of the presentation. How much would you trust a company that couldn't give you a accurate price after 3 months of work? I had to tiptoe my way around the question, as the third member stayed silent and motionless, and that is probably the most pissed off I have ever been in my scholastic career.
(I just realised I kinda blogged in your blog, so sorry  )
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Aren't you all meant to know that? 
anyway. I think more or less people get stressed in group assignments. I usually get one person i know and pick some one random but always ask about their work ethic etc...
some times you get a guy who want to take over everything :D but that is bad because you end up not learning and feel like shit
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Talking to the professor was the way to go, some people just don't care that much and tend to mooch of your work.
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so in essence you had a cool prof who understood everything and put the ball in the right persons court. sweet!
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EPT
