Student gets revenge on slacker lab partner by using the scientific method to document their laziness: ‘[I] started being methodical’

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  • A group of lab students uses microscopes for a lab.
  • "My lab partner spent the whole semester doing nothing. I made sure the professor found out without saying a single word."

    I'm in my second year and last fall | had a compulsory lab course where we were assigned partners at the start of term.
  • I got paired with a guy I'll call Marcus. First two sessions he showed up, seemed fine.
  • Then he started arriving late, then not at all, and by week four he had basically stopped coming to the actual lab sessions and would just text me an hour before asking what we got.
  • I covered for him the first couple of times because I didn't want to cause drama and I thought maybe he had something going on.
  • But weeks kept passing and nothing changed. He'd show up for the write-up days when we had to submit work, add his name to everything, and disappear again.
  • Two people in lab coats shake hands.
  • I did every experiment, every measurement, every draft. At some point I stopped being annoyed and started being methodical.
  • kept a very simple running document. Date, what was done in session, who was physically present in the lab, any communications.
  • I didn't do this aggressively, I just kept it updated like a log. Towards the end of term our professor announced that final grades would partly reflect individual lab participation and asked us to each submit a brief self- assessment of our contributions.
  • Marcus submitted his and I can only imagine what it said. I submitted mine, which was factual, specific, and had dates.
  • I also attached my log as a supplementary document without any commentary, just labeled it "session attendance record" and left it at that.
  • I got an email from my professor two days later asking if I was available to discuss the lab assessement.
  • Marcus ended up with a significantly lower individual grade than the group grade we'd both been expecting.
  • Cheezburger Image 10611568384
  • Full_Sun5350 Keeping accurate records and log is part of the scientific method, isn't it? You did nothing wrong
  • OP ciphernolan2 Thanks. I just kept a clean log and let the facts speak.
  • ProfessionalBread176 This happened to me years ago. Group project, no supervision throughout. One guy NEVER showed up. And panicked when he found out that there would be a peer-based grade (which I think is not totally fair). He found out that I was planning to vote him down due to lack of participation, and he flunked ME, who did the actual work. So I ended up with like 4 As and one F. He on the other hand got smoked. Because he literally did nothing and waited until it was too late to do anyth
  • Dougally Science is around around and finding out. But you need some documentation as well. Otherwise you are just around.
  • ThePurpleAesthetic That happened to me in college once. We had groups of four to present a project & the only time the fourth member showed up was presentation day. She legit stood there like an idiot because she didn't know what we were doing. I was blunt with my critique. I said she never showed up & didn't do a d in thing.

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