My Horrible Nightmare Group Project

Last year, in my 11th grade English class, we had to do a project. Now, we did many different (and meaningless) projects that year, but this one stands out for just how much I hated it,

The project was to pick a Canadian Indigenous artist, research their biographies, meanings of artworks they made, make connections between their lives and what we learned in the unit, and finally write a opinion piece (essay) about the person, oh also, you had to make it using Google Sites to make it look professional, or whatever.

But that’s not even why I hated the project so much, like I could handle the work and everything, that’s fine, there’s just one thing about that project was the absolute worst,

we had to work in freaking GROUPS of FOUR, and the teacher didn’t even assign the stupid groups, WE HAD TO!

Now you might be thinking; “oh yaay, working in groups is fun, we could work with friends, share ideas, and evenly share the work to make everything easy”

But that’s just the issue, none of my friends were in that class. I was essentially just working alongside random, other stupid teenagers during the entire semester in that class. So it was gonna be a gamble with who I choosed to work with.

So I started looking around and found 2 guys that seemed kind of chill and thought, “eh, I guess they’ll do”

(Apparently, there was another kid that was going to also be in the group, but he was sick that day, and the days he did come, he made everyone in the group, including himself, annoyingly hard to deal with, so those 2 guys I thought were chill, were actually loud and stupid)

I asked if I could join them, and they said sure, AND that was the last time they spoke to me about anything. I’m not even kidding, for the entire rest of the month or so that we had to work on that project, none of those same people said anything to me, like what!

Anyways, while my group was picking someone, wait, is it called picking when all they did was make fun of Indigenous People’s names? No, well then let me rephrase that…

While my group was making fun of famous Indigenous Peoples, I did the research and eventually found the Indigenous person to do the project on, Jason Carter (who is actually a really great guy).

Since my “team” didn’t know how to talk about anything other than Tiktok brainrots and memes, we weren’t able to equally split up the work. But since I’m SO NICE, I put the responsibility on myself to write the connections to the unit, the biography, and the analysis of Jason Carter’s artworks. That way all the other people had to do was write the opinion piece, make the citations, find pretty pictures, and design the front slide, that’s it.

But if you think that’s bad, well keep reading.

Eventually the teacher came to check up on our progress and since I was doing all of the work, naturally we would be a little behind. When the teacher asked us why we we’re behind, one guy says the most stupid motherf*****g, answer.

He points at me and says, “I don’t think he even did anything to help, like what is he even doing right now?”. Oh, I don’t know buddy, what was I doing, hmm…

Oh yeah, maybe making your entire fu**ing project!

A few weeks later, when the project was almost complete, I was doing the finishing touches at home and I realized that those 3 morons didn’t even make the MLA citations (it’s like a reference page). So on top of my other duties, I also did that.

Then when I checked on the one MAIN thing my “partners”we’re in charge of, the opinion essay, I realized something while reading it…

That they got every last bit of it off of Chat — GPT

Now, My teacher was really (really) annoying, but she wasn’t stupid. If she read that opinion piece, she would know that AI made it completely, so guess who had to make all the changes to it, ME!

(More freaking work)

For the project, we also had to record an audio of us reading the opinion piece and upload it to the site we made. For a second, I actually had a glimmer of hope, that since I’m the one with the quietest voice in the group, I wouldn’t have to do that part and at least their never — ending voices could actually be used for something useful.

But apparently, they didn’t know how to record an audio, or how to upload it to the site, so you wanna know who did the audio?

The person writing this article (otherwise known as, me)

After finally clicking submit on that damn project, I was absolutely exhausted. I was prepared to forget that this situation ever happened…

Then one day my teacher told the class,

“Hey guys, so you actually also need to present your sites you made in front of the class”

WHAT! , like this isn’t even funny anymore, I have to present my entire project, that I spend weeks making all on my own, and what makes it even worse is that I have to present with these three idiots!

Since they never talked to me before this, I never knew who was reading what. Eventually I found out on the day of, that I was presenting the longest part that needs the most elaboration, while those three can read the easier parts (Thank god, they knew how to read!).

Anyways, all in all, I’m glad I was able to help myself (and them) so much. I always thought of myself as the one that would be carried in any kind of project, but after that project I realized I could also single-handedly carry myself and three idiots out of a land of failing into an 80’s or 90’s grade.

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So yeah, that’s that!