The snot has attacked me and I’m really trying not to let it win and turn into a full-blown cold. I do not have time this week for this nonsense.
My group is presenting a simulation of a change strategy in Wednesday’s class. We have one person on our team who is clueless. English is not his first language and he’s from one of those countries that produces men who are domineering and bossy. He stood up a classmate two times last week when she agreed to meet with him to help him understand our project–the project we’ve been working on for weeks. He’s not in our program but is taking the class as an elective. He didn’t start the class until 3 weeks into the semester and the professor tried to talk him out of it. He has yet to be prepared for class and I’m really tired of him. The kicker is he’s pursuing a doctoral degree and is nowhere near the performance level of the people in my class.
I’m predicting he’ll burst into flames on Wednesday and who knows what he’ll do the following Wednesday when we present the debrief of the simulation. To give you an idea of how big this class project is these two nights of facilitation and presentation are worth 45% of our grade. Thankfully, our professor is aware of the issues surrounding this guy and will be mindful of that when she hands out our grades.
I had him in a doc class…..did the same thing – strolled in three weeks late to class (the night we had to turn in our first project). Nice. Then I got stuck with him in a group project. Luckily brainy girl and I were on the right track. She was the bright bulb with exactly the stuff I didn’t fully get and I was the bright bulb on the other. We finally went to the professor and was like, look, he absolutely cannot read or write a coherent sentence. He just told us to let it go and he’d “figure out” who did what. OMG! I also had him in a writing intensive course and one night we had to give feedback on each others’ writing. Let me just say that you should be proud you were stuck with him – shows you can carry the nut jobs and survive. Now that I teach, I totally get it – partner the weak with the strong — yippee, frog (or goat), you’re the strong… Oh, and by the way, this is supposedly his last semester – transferring out. – I think “code” for bye-bye.
I think it was totally the luck of the draw–we were down one person and so got stuck with him. If a member of our group hadn’t kept trying to help him, it would have been really ugly. I can hardly wait to see what happens next week. Too bad he didn’t decide to transfer out before this semester. The kicker is he responded to only one email during our prep time and then sent one to nearly everyone in class inviting us to some inter-faith thing at U of R today. Whatever dude.