ALBERTO GONZALEZ
Staff Scallywag
This semester is now at full speed and that means many things. You might’ve taken your first exams of the semester, there might be a rough draft of a paper due, a lesson plan, a blog post … er, whatever art majors have to do. The point being: now is around the time when most get an opportunity to get a mark for more than just a homework in the ol’ gradebook. For most that is well received, it is always good to prove that the effort you have been putting into a class is paying off, for others, it is more of a wake-up call, but for some unlucky bastards on campus, it is the beginning of a nightmare.
An unnamed student, who we shall just call Chuck, was a very proud student. He always made Honor Roll and made sure to make it to every class he ever had. Then, it happened.
He was drafted into a group based on birth month (seriously? we are not in middle school), and little did he know that people who were born in July really sucked. Their zodiac sign of Cancer never made much sense. But it seemed like a simple enough group project, and who would turn down an opportunity for some collaborative learning? If done correctly, everyone can get a good grade and no one person has to really do too much work.
Poor Chuck never saw it coming. The signs were all there, but he just hadn’t noticed them until it was too late. As if he had just been transported into an auction house with items priced to sell, tasks were being claimed up left and right, one by one, in such a flash that before Chuck could even comprehend what had just happened, there was nothing left to do. His cohorts had all taken up arms as if this group project was really just a pissing contest to see who could flex their Cancer status harder and make it seem like they did the most work, all while leaving Chuck in no man’s land. All this academic real estate around him and Chuck suddenly had no land to claim as his own. Chuck no-land.
In an attempt to reconcile this clearly egregious situation, Chuck was able to get out a few words from his mouth hole which had suddenly turned into the Gobi, “I am sorry guys, but I don’t have anything to do.”
Surely that was all that was needed to alleviate his worst nightmare coming to life. Then he was met with a sigh and the group consensus that there was always a lazy group member who does not work.
That was nine days ago, and the project is now due this Thursday. The stress broke him, he is not the same person that he was coming into this group project. He was immediately shunned by his group, no longer the part of the GroupMe or email chain, he was left to fend for himself. He heard whispers that his name was not to go on the project; now he just whispers to himself while mindlessly wandering the library.
Attempts at extra credit and alternative assignments were met with little success, as Dr. Wilson was not really sure how you could earn extra credit in geometry — she was barely sure how they even had a group project in her class. Her telling him this was the breaking point. He became hysterical, and begged her for any chance to make up the points. His screams could be heard down the halls. “Please Dr. Wilson, please Dr. Wilson,” over and over until he tired himself out and campus police could remove him from her office. He never stopped begging, slowly becoming so exhausted all he could do was whisper her name, “Wilson . . .Wilson.”