The Last Word

Such begins the lone and final post I shall ever create pertaining to the "situation" involving the group member that wasn't.

For clarification, I have had two massive group projects this semester. This is not uncommon, however, the stark contrast between the groups most certainly was.

I left off about to embark on the last presentation for the “good group” class, to be concluded by an “other group” meeting with the program chair to have a "situational discussion" as I have come to call it. I was looking about as forward to doing this as I would to perform surgery on myself....while drunk...with a rusty grapefruit spoon.

However, off to class I went, with my kick ass group (Lmizzle, Steve-O, and a non-blogger friend of mine) to present our final requirement of the class. The "person of problem", or "Spawn" as they have been termed, refused to make eye contact with anyone in my group, anyone who was in our “other group”, or anyone on the same side of the room I was sitting on for that matter.

The presentation came and went without incident, and I had about enough time to blink between the conclusion of our nearly 30 minute presentation and the beginning of this meeting.

Brief Summary:

She denied everything (to no one’s surprise)

She tried to blame it on the other group members in a feeble attempt to claim that we in fact were at fault because our communication wasn’t effective. I rebutted with the fact that I had 149 emails of correspondence pertaining to this project, of which only 13 were from her, over half of which were single line responses about whether or not she may or may not be attending a group meeting.

Group member’s responses: supportive statements indicating that all group members were indeed included on all correspondence, and that they too, also had well over 100 emails for this project that could support my claim.

Her response: a shrug.

Instructor’s response: stunned silence with wide-eyes.

And so this went on for nearly an hour and a half, with the most common responses being her random arm waving, the comments “I’ve never had this problem before”, “I don’t know what to say to that”, a lot of shrugging, and…

My personal favourite:

“Well, it’s too late to do anything about it now isn’t it?”

I allowed her three strikes at the bat with that particular comment before I dropped her in her tracks with a single raised eyebrow, and a look so cold that I could feel my body temperature drop. My only response was a slight grin and an unsettlingly calm “you think so?”

Instructor’s response: stunned silence with wide-eyes.

Several minutes of silence later, we resumed.

(I found out the next day from my wonderful group members that they were having immense difficulty in not smiling when I did this ~ lovely girls they are. I would be honoured to work with them again in the future under more favourable circumstances)

**************

Since then, the two girls and I have had yet another consultation meeting with the program head after allowing everything to settle for 24 hours. It was a brief meeting, but went extremely well, and we even proposed a potential solution to the problem whereby he gets to remain the professional instructor while she actually has to earn a grade. *And no Doug, we didn’t take your suggestion*

It was likely the most favourable discussion that we could have had, and this actually feels like the closest thing to a resolution that may be possible. The program chair actually thanked us for coming back to him and that he would re-evaluate the circumstances. For many people, I realize that this may not mean much, however, for anyone who knows him, this is significant.

So there it is; the final installment of “The Group Member That Wasn’t”.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled Okami blogging program.

Thank-you.