Is It Just Me?
I don't think so, but here goes.
For my young adult literature class this term we have been doing literature circles. Our instructor had us group up by our current or future jobs, so I am in a group with two other future media specialists (the other groups include elementary and secondary teachers and public librarians). Our group is smaller than the others (most of which have six or seven) for some reason, but I didn't think it would be a big deal. Except that it seemed like every time we met in our groups, one of my group members would be absent (I admit I was gone from class one time, too, but I knew we weren't meeting in groups that night).
First, no one wanted to pick which books we were going to read, so I finally picked two and said, "Are those okay with you?" No one complained, so we went with them. The first time we met to discuss the first book, I was the only one who had even started it. "Meg" had gone online to print out the Spark's Notes. "Ben" was absent, but informed us the next time (by which time I had finished the book) that he had seen the movie. Being the sarcastic little wench that I am, I simply commented, "Silly me. Here I actually intended to just read the book."
On Monday, Meg was absent, so I met with just Ben to discuss our second book, which I was about two-thirds done with. Not only had Ben not even started the second book, but he still hadn't finished the first one! We were informed by our instructor that, during today's class, the literature groups would be informally sharing their readings with the entire class. I wasn't too worried, as I was nearly done with the second book, but hoped it would be enough to get Ben's ass in gear so he would at least finish the first book.
Once again, silly me.
Meg was absent again. The class sat in a big circle around the room and the groups started to share. I leaned over to Ben and said, "I'll talk about Summer of the Monkeys, since you haven't read it yet, and you can do The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." He got this frightened look on his face and started stammering. And then he tried to get me to talk about both books because, "Well, I'm not at all prepared because I was trying to get my author presentation done." Which is crap, by the way, because he didn't even do his author presentation today, which means it's not until next week!
Absolutely stunned that this grown man (he's a good ten years older than me) was trying to get out of his share of the work, I finally said, "Well, I don't have anything prepared either, but we're just sharing what the book is about. You can do that much." And then I pretty much refused to even look at him the rest of class. And you know what? Something about how his presentation started out very detailed and then got very general tells me that he still hasn't even finished reading the book. He better hurry... our notecards are due a week from today.
And it gets even better. The next group to share was talking about Hoot, and Ben felt the need to chime in with details about it. The only problem is that the details he was sharing were from the movie that came out last month, not the book. When people started looking at him like the idiot he was being, I did him a favor and leaned over to say, "That's not in the book." He then, wisely, stopped talking.
So, am I unreasonable to expect that my classmates in a graduate level course actually do their work? I mean, it's not like we had a ton of dry textbook reading to do. We were reading books for kids and teenagers for God's sake. I guess I should just be grateful that no part of my grade depends on the work of those nitwits.
For my young adult literature class this term we have been doing literature circles. Our instructor had us group up by our current or future jobs, so I am in a group with two other future media specialists (the other groups include elementary and secondary teachers and public librarians). Our group is smaller than the others (most of which have six or seven) for some reason, but I didn't think it would be a big deal. Except that it seemed like every time we met in our groups, one of my group members would be absent (I admit I was gone from class one time, too, but I knew we weren't meeting in groups that night).
First, no one wanted to pick which books we were going to read, so I finally picked two and said, "Are those okay with you?" No one complained, so we went with them. The first time we met to discuss the first book, I was the only one who had even started it. "Meg" had gone online to print out the Spark's Notes. "Ben" was absent, but informed us the next time (by which time I had finished the book) that he had seen the movie. Being the sarcastic little wench that I am, I simply commented, "Silly me. Here I actually intended to just read the book."
On Monday, Meg was absent, so I met with just Ben to discuss our second book, which I was about two-thirds done with. Not only had Ben not even started the second book, but he still hadn't finished the first one! We were informed by our instructor that, during today's class, the literature groups would be informally sharing their readings with the entire class. I wasn't too worried, as I was nearly done with the second book, but hoped it would be enough to get Ben's ass in gear so he would at least finish the first book.
Once again, silly me.
Meg was absent again. The class sat in a big circle around the room and the groups started to share. I leaned over to Ben and said, "I'll talk about Summer of the Monkeys, since you haven't read it yet, and you can do The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." He got this frightened look on his face and started stammering. And then he tried to get me to talk about both books because, "Well, I'm not at all prepared because I was trying to get my author presentation done." Which is crap, by the way, because he didn't even do his author presentation today, which means it's not until next week!
Absolutely stunned that this grown man (he's a good ten years older than me) was trying to get out of his share of the work, I finally said, "Well, I don't have anything prepared either, but we're just sharing what the book is about. You can do that much." And then I pretty much refused to even look at him the rest of class. And you know what? Something about how his presentation started out very detailed and then got very general tells me that he still hasn't even finished reading the book. He better hurry... our notecards are due a week from today.
And it gets even better. The next group to share was talking about Hoot, and Ben felt the need to chime in with details about it. The only problem is that the details he was sharing were from the movie that came out last month, not the book. When people started looking at him like the idiot he was being, I did him a favor and leaned over to say, "That's not in the book." He then, wisely, stopped talking.
So, am I unreasonable to expect that my classmates in a graduate level course actually do their work? I mean, it's not like we had a ton of dry textbook reading to do. We were reading books for kids and teenagers for God's sake. I guess I should just be grateful that no part of my grade depends on the work of those nitwits.
posted by Charlie at 9:28 PM
1 Comments:
I was in a group project where we had to create an IRI. One of the morons in my group actually stole her passages, word for word from a published book, the QRI. I totally ratted her out to the professor so my grade wouldn't suffer.
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