Group Assignment Asshole

For the second time in almost as many weeks I turned up to a tutorial solely to collect my mark. This time though I wasn't confident of actually passing. This wasn't an open book test with multiple choice section, this was for a report I only started the day it was due and handed in the next day.

I got 17/20 marks, and didn't even get pingged 10% for being late. I thus once again resolved I didn't need to be there and left.

Let me elaborate on this project. This project involved answering questions about two legal cases sighting the relevant legal issues. It had a word limit of 1600 all up. It was a group assignment, with max 4 members, minimum two.

Had I actually had the foresight to check when the assignment was due before the due date, I still would have immediately leapt on the opportunity to work by myself.

1600 words doesn't warrant enough effort for a group assignment. Group assignments generally cost me more effort than is saved by sharing the workload.

Interestingly in the lecture before the tute there is this guy that complains, habitually and since complaining about the number of 'asians' in our course I habitually avoid him without being impolite.

For reasons I can't fathom this douche cares about marks. He complains about our lecturer and thus was surprised when I told him this subject was my favorite. 'Because I don't care almost as much as the lecturer doesn't' being my justification.

This invited a discussion of other subjects and the group assignments. This guy complained about doing 95% of them. This complaint I would expect maybe from a first year, not somebody in their second year of their second degree.

I tried to espouse my 'yeah but you don't want a credit student doing a credit standard contribution when you could do it to a distinction, you're lucky to have them not contribute and the only way to buy them off is offer them 100% contribution.'

For those not at RMIT I don't know how other uni's work but with group assignments you get an assignment cover sheet and you can put next to each group members name their contribution - 100% is the status quo, which implies everybody contributed equally and thus recieves 100% of the mark. The only time you penalise somebody is when they contribute nothing, or if you just want to discourage somebody from asking to work with you again.

Anyway, this guy cut me off, and told me in his last report he asked a guy to rewrite his section 5 times then dropped him from the group when it 'wasn't up to scratch' this tough talk presumably impresses somebody but I just blurted out without thinking 'it's just marks...'

He responded 'it's just your future' which is something alarmist my mother might say. This immediately sent me into a reverie contemplating my future but that's a different post right there. He then made a spitting gesture and turned away. So that killed the conversation and I possibly should be thankful for my impulses.

Anyway, what future in this guys shoes is worth treating people like shit and dis/un/anti?/compassionately ditching them from a group for something as inconsequential as an assignment mark. Get some perspective.

For example, what are you actually trying to achieve through good grades. If an employer looked at your academic record they would see a high GPA or something and HD's a DI's and whatnot all over your report.

Presumably employers recruit by taking the GPA of every applicant and picking the highest one? Would you want to work for an employer that did that? No. You have to survive a job interview, here you see huge differentials in the effort:reward ratios.

The effort to reward of getting a good GPA is minimal relative to the effort to reward of not being an asshole. It takes very little effort to not be an asshole. You just have to be patient and understanding and compassionate. You have to smile a little and relax. It takes hours and hours to learn a bunch of theory of which you will apply 5%.

Furthermore the most oft repeated tragedy of recruiting is being hired for technical reasons and then fired for personal ones. You are 'brilliant' BUT your team hates you. This is why the interview is far more important than the resume review, and companies know it. They don't trust references, they don't trust grades and quite often treat the academics that instructed you with contempt.

So why the fuck be an arsehole over grades?

Anyway, I learned never to work in a group assignment with this dumbass, 1. he'd probably insist on doing work I'd be better off doing for him and 2. He'd probably demand I put equal time into it and 3. He's an arsehole, shit comes out of him.