#@$)ing LAB PARTNERS!

[Diablo]

Anybody currently dealing with college crap? I'm in this materials lab at college. The class has been pretty brutal. Its a 3 credit engineering course so naturally it has over 9 hours of class time a week.

Every week we have a 5 page lab document that we have write and deliver on whatever topic is worked on that week. The 5 pages is actually though a bit of a misnomer as the 5 page limit only refers to the main body of the text. Typically a lab report will be about 15 to 20 pages with all the references, graphs, tables, and spreadsheets. Its been a brutal grind but I have managed to average about an 85% on these suckers. What sucks is that every week, you two other lab partners are chosen at random. Some weeks obviously are easier than others.

We end up with 10 lab assignments that could for 60% of your final grade. I just got my lab 9 grade back...we got a 28%. When I picked up the document from the engineering office, right away I notice an issue....its was only 3 PAGES LONG?!?

The shit for brains who sole task that week was to print and deliver the final copy of the document that me and the other individual wrote, for reasons beyond all fucking logic, delivered our first rough copy. How rough was it? My first fucking name was spelled wrong on the cover sheet. It had no references and was actually missing half the pages in just the body alone.

I have gone from potentially getting an A in the course if I smoked the final to now being concerned about landing a fucking B in the class. Before anyone suggests going to the instructor and begging for a regrade...well...good luck finding an engineering professor at my school willing regrade anything.

It blows my mind there are people in 300 level classes that are still fucking around like it is freshman year. I am getting so fucking sick of babysitting these kids.

[hinakiba777]

OH wow that sucks so hard. that is just horrible.

I remember in my second year I had this HUGE group presentation due. I could not get my group to meet up outside of class, and one class two out of the 5 people in our group skipped. We had to meet the TA twice, but instead of all going twice, the group decided that the two boys would go one time, and the two girls would go another.

So, two days before the presentation is due, we have our final meeting with the TA. He explains to us that the guys has TOTALLY screwed up telling us what we needed to do research wise for the project. I ask the TA is it's okay if we just tweak the research a bit, and continue on with what we have. He almost agrees, but then the other two girls announce that we will just start from scratch on the project he really wanted. Which of course I took as them saying "We didn't start on the project yet, so we don't mind restarting."

Next day we discuss it the boys and they agree. That night I head back to the library and try to do two weeks worth of work in one night. It was nearly impossible and I was really pissed.

When we presented the following morning it was obvious that we had all worked very hard on our assignment, but that we had never talked to each other. I was lucky enough to go first, and had to not laugh as the others in the group kept restating my points over and over in their sections. It was hilarious.

Everyone individually was smart enough for us to rock on the assignment, but we had no cohesion as a group.

[teh_blumchenkinder]

*sigh*...
Diablo, your story makes me feel ill. I've been fortunate enough not to have dealt with that in my life... but damn your professors are making you earn that grade...
There's a reason (or FIVE) that I'm not in Engineering!
You could protest to the department head... not sure if that would work, however.
Booze?

[Dreamstalker]

My Information Security class has a security audit project that's due on Monday...except the instructor forgot to actually activate VMWare for the lab environment. Whoops.

Unfortunately it's something that can only be done in the computer lab, and it's a bit of a pain in the ass for me to trek down there so I want to be sure the lab's working. I've been emailing the instructor about the missing license and haven't heard anything, so I don't know if he's going to push the due date back or what (he knows about the bad license, it's just a matter of getting IT to fix it).

In a class that I just finished up (200-level Evidence & Court Procedure), only 3 of us actually understood enough to do well. Last week she came out and said that there were very few students who were doing even "B" level work...I think she ended up reworking the class so that everyone else could keep up; a few times she would tell my corner of the room "Be quiet for a few minutes, I want the rest of these guys to do the thinking"

[Greenday]

I got a 25 on a lab report once. It was just four questions she wanted answered and it was for a lab split into two parts, one for each partner. Three questions were on what my partner did and I couldn't get a hold of her and I couldn't find her. I went to my teacher early and she just said suffering because of stuff other people do is part of life.

[teh_blumchenkinder]

I went to my teacher early and she just said suffering because of stuff other people do is part of life.

Ow. The purpose of University is to learn (ostensibly. it's also to vet/certify people, etc). THAT does not further (book) learning! What happened Greenday?
Philosophy like that needs to be kept out of the class room.

[Dreamstalker]

I once got seriously screwed on a project for a history class. We were doing group presentations on ancient civilizations; all seemed well until a week before the projects were due. The other students in my group, for whatever reason, decided to drop the class. So poor me who previously only had one small section to present ended up being absorbed by another group and making an entire presentation fit into the 5 minutes I was given (and having already left the class, my other group members couldn't even give me their notes).

I did pretty horribly, nobody in the other group was even remotely willing to help me out. I managed to get a passing grade for it, but that grade dragged my average for the course into the toilet...I would think the teacher would have cut me at least a bit of slack considering what happened (and he knew all about it). I passed the class but was pretty damn mad about what went on.