In Theories of Personality (PSYC 310) this semester, there was a group project. Groups were assigned after mid-term. I have never liked group projects because of the awkward interpersonal aspects of them, and the difficulty of getting started. Somehow I always manage to end up in the leadership role in groups that I am in (even though I am the biggest sheep there is). This time I ended up in the leadership position because no one else would make the first move. A few days after taking leadership of the  5 person group, I had only 2 group members respond. A week later one of the people who responded dropped the course and the other had become non-responsive. I let a few weeks pass, and tried on several occasions to contact the remaining 2 members of the group (I responded every time I emailed myself, I am good at self-communication). Finally I was left with the feeling that no one was going to respond to me and I contacted the instructor, who basically granted me permission to go ahead and do it as an individual project. A few hours after that permission was granted one of my other group mates contacted me and asked what she could help on. I gave her two of the component parts. Again, weeks passed. The project was due on April 22nd, so on the 20th I decided to do my part and hers and then I turned the project in as mine and graded each member of my group accordingly on the group assessment sheet. You would think this story ends there, right? No, not at all. Last night (actually 1:58am on April 23rd), I got an email from her, the text said “Thanks.” and she attached her component part of the project. I thought, “ok, shes like way  behind, and I’m done, not an issue”, then I go into the class discussion board and she has replied to my project posting, stating that she had tried sending the email before and she thought I had received it. I tend to take pity on non-technical folk, so I decided to check the properties of the Word document. I looked at the statistics tab, and checked the document creation and overall editing time. It was started April 23, 2009 at 1:06am, and was edited for 42 minutes. She started her component 3 hours after the time the project was due, and on top of that, I asked for citations for her work, the document contained none.

I do not know what is going to come of this, but at the moment I am hoping that my “partner” spontaneously combusts or goes back into the hole she has been hiding in for the past 3 weeks.

On the up side, everyone likes my presentation and acknowledges all of  MY hard work, even after the  alleged “partner” tried to dive in and claim that I had somehow left her out. Me intentionally leaving her out would imply that I liked doing all of the work myself, right? That so isn’t the case.