Long ranty post ahead...

I don't remember if I mentioned this previously, but I had an issue with a group assignment this semester. Actually, I always have issues with group assignments (I'm always saddled with the slackers, for some reason), but this time I actually petitioned to have the problem member removed from the group.

So, for a brief history, it was a group of 4, including two international students that had landed in Australia in February (read: very little command of the English language). I was already worried, because as everyone knows, I'm a complete nazi when it comes to written reports (grammar, spelling, etc). I elected to be the proof reader straight up to ensure we at least submitted something coherent (which essentially increased my workload x 3, because I basically had to rewrite the ISs contributions from scratch - lovely girls, but what they wrote was not English). The other student was a young girl, about 19, who honestly thought she was top shit and knew more than the rest of us, and wanted to take control of the group.

The assessment consisted of two pieces - an oral and a report. D (the young girl) decided to choose the first topic, which meant the oral was due the next week, and we would have only that weekend to work on it. The rest of us agreed because she was just so adamant about it (and to be honest, I do like to get group assignments out of the way as soon as possible). We agreed to meet that weekend. Myself and the ISs prepared before the meeting and brought various analysis models and other notes with us. D did not appear to have done anything, but battled me for control of the group, and then started delegating tasks. Funnily enough, she delegated herself a section which I and another girl (K) had already covered in our notes, so she didn't have to do any research. She also gave herself another part to do which we hadn't covered yet.

Over the next few days, D was sending the group emails about the work, asking everyone to send through their contributions, and generally making it seem like she was on top of the work. I was putting the written report together from everyone's notes, and also doing the Powerpoint presentation. I kept asking her for her notes for the slides and for the report, but she only sent through some vague dot points, which I really didn't think were correct, but she just kept arguing with me about it, so I let it go.

5 minutes before the presentation, she decides to scrap the part she was supposed to research herself, leaving only the part that K and I had done. So in essence, she had done no work on the oral.

We then had 7 weeks to hand in the written report. The two ISs and myself worked on it steadily over those weeks, and D kept sending emails asking for everyone's contribution, so it made it seem like she was up with the work. Whenever I asked her for her contribution to put in the report, however, she'd make some vague excuses and tell me she'd send it in a couple of days.

By the day the report was due, I still didn't have her contribution, and I was very sceptical that what she had told the rest of us to write was correct. I'd said as much to the ISs, but they didn't want to go against her, because she was a bit scary to them. I wasn't happy, but I went along with it anyway. 2 hours before it's due, and I call her, because I still don't have her part. She tells me she's just about to send it. I tell her I'll be leaving work at 4.40 to go up to the uni to hand it in by 5. 4.30 - no report. 4.40 - no report. I call her - no answer. 4.45 - she finally sends something through. It's 50 words. In dot points. And it's complete rubbish that makes absolutely no sense. I put it in the report anyway and walk up to uni.

I speak to K and W, and they agree we should speak to the tutor (although to be honest, I'm not exactly sure they understood what I was talking about). I show the tutor the report, and show him D's contribution. He looks at it, says it's all wrong, and then says the rest of the report is all wrong as well, just as I thought. He gives us that night and the next to redo the entire report and hand it in again (which I thought was quite nice of him).

I make the executive decision not to include D in the rewrite. As far as I'm concerned, my responsibility to her ended at 5pm. She didn't even show up to hand in the report, and having sent through such rubbish 15 minutes before the due time said to me that she didn't care about the assignment, or the consequences for the rest of the group members. I suspect she sent it through so late so I couldn't ask her to redo it. 15 minutes beforehand means no time for review/correction.

Anyway, the rest of us rewrote the assignment over the next two nights, even though I had two other assignments to finish and two exams on the weekend to study for. We got it in on the Friday, and received 80% for it (which is decidedly less than I would have liked, but short of doing the ISs work for them, it was the best we could do).

I also made a decision not to speak to D about the situation. I figured she could find out from the tutor that the rest of us had filled in peer evaluation sheets saying she didn't deserve any of the marks.

I thought the tutor had discussed it with her, so I was surprised to get an sms from her yesterday asking what "our" result was for the assignment. I told her she'd have to speak to the tutor. She then sent an email to us today that basically said she was disappointed about it, and that she was going to appeal the result. I wrote back and said if she could prove she'd done the work, I was happy for her to get the same mark as the rest of the group. I told her why we'd decided to do what we did - she didn't do any work for the oral, save for show up and talk about the analyses that K and I had done, and that she had done very little for the report, and what she had done was completely wrong, and had been sent in with no time for review or correction. I told her the final report that was handed in had none of her work in it.

She then wrote back and said we should have discussed it with her, and that our actions were underhanded, and that she wasn't a slacker and was really upset about it, because she'd had glandular fever for the last 2 months.

I replied that if that was the case, she'd have a doctor's certificate to show to the unit co-ordinator to get her mark reviewed. I also said it was her responsibility to let us know if she'd been having problems, and didn't think she could get the work done. I told her she'd had 7 weeks to let us know. If she'd let us know she wasn't well, we could have worked something out. I also said if what she'd sent through had been correct, we might not have kicked her off the report. It was a combination of it being completely wrong, inadequate, and sent in 15 minutes before the deadline.

She then wrote back that her doctor's certificate only started the week after the report was due, and that she wasn't going to contest the decision because she was too upset about it.

Um, what? You're so upset about it you're not going to contest it? After you said at first you were going to appeal it? Riiight. I wrote back and told her she really should speak to the unit co-ordinator and if she'd had glandular fever for 2 months, she could probably get a report from the doctor to say so, which would help her. I even offered to contact the unit co-ordinator for her to help her cause (I was trying to be nice, but I'm not entirely sure why).

She then said, "Well, i was unaware that you had a problem with my work, and considering that my illness occured after the report was submitted, i didnt think it to be any consequence. Furthermore, if my part was wrong, its not like i did it intentially and i would have been grateful to be able to re do my part. It would have not only benefitted the group, but also myself and my personal knowledge in relation to the exam. Due to the fact that it's so late in the term, i am unable to find anyone to explain my misunderstandings to me, and thus am at a disadvantage for the exam.

I just wish that i was aware of the situation sooner, say perhaps during the 7 weeks we worked together, or even after you had issues with my contribution to the presentation.

I dont want to persue the issue any further due to the fact that it is making me extremely upset, as i have never been accused of this before, and i have much more assessment to complete and this issue is hindering my ability to think coherently.

Thank you anyway, but the damage is done."

I'm sorry, but hang on here. So you weren't sick during the weeks the report was due? So what was your excuse then? Yes, you could have redone your part if you'd sent it to me earlier! Sending it to me 15 minutes before it's due means none of us has a chance to review it and correct any mistakes! We took you off the report after we were given a chance to rewrite it because we were given a chance to rewrite because your contribution was both inadequate and wrong! Why would we then ask you to contribute to the final report when all you would do is say you'd send something else through and then not follow through, as you'd done the 7 weeks previously? Not to mention you'd been saying the whole time how the report should be written, telling me I was wrong, when in actual fact it was you that was wrong, and me that was correct. Why would we want you to contribute again when we'd had nothing but problems with you?

Also, you never show up to tutorials or lectures, so it's hardly our fault that you haven't been able to work out why your thinking is wrong. Perhaps if you showed up to class you might actually learn something!

As for letting you know about this situation during the 7 weeks we were doing the report - what the fuck?! We didn't know there was a problem until 15 minutes before the deadline, because you didn't tell us you were having problems and weren't going to be sending anything through until the last minute! How the fuck were we supposed to discuss it with you when you made it appear you were up with the work, sending emails to the other group members asking for their contributions?! As far as I'm concerned, that was part of your whole deception. Try to make it look as if you were working the whole time, when you really were just slacking off, and thinking you could get away with it because you'd kept up the emails.

As far as I'm concerned my responsibility to you ended on the deadline. If you want to send through substandard work with no time for review, making it clear you don't care about the assessment or the consequences for the rest of the group members, than I'm not going to discuss the matter with you any further. So no, I don't think I should have discussed it with you after the deadline. As far as I was concerned, you were dead to me after that. I don't suffer fools gladly.

So you think you were hard done by, but you don't want to pursue the matter further? That says more to me than anything else. If I was part of a group that kicked me out, and I honestly thought I'd contributed equally, I'd certainly be pursuing it further, showing copies of notes and anything else I had. The fact that you're not going to bother disputing a zero grade tells me you have nothing to back your claims up, because you really didn't do any work, and thought you could just get away with it.

Yes, the damage is done. You did it to yourself. Don't come crying to me. Unfortunately for you, I've had 7 years of shitty group assignments, and I will not tolerate slack students joining groups and not contributing anything, and then expecting to receive full marks. You can just fuck right off.

I didn't send that response. I didn't send any response. I ignored her after that.

God, I am so grateful I only have 2 more subjects of this degree left, and that I have no more group assignments in my second degree, and no group assignments at all in the third, because I study that one externally. I love external study! No stupid bogan teenagers, no group assignments, no classes to attend! Bliss.

Anyway, do you think I was harsh? Were we justified in kicking her out?

I couldn't agree more, kitty

Save the sharks

I know I've railed against charities before (particularly the ones who harass people in the street), but I saw Sharkwater the other night, and I would highly recommend you go and see it.

I don't really swim in the ocean, largely because I'm afraid of waves (yes, waves. I don't like being splashed), but I have been diving at the Great Barrier Reef, and have also watched William swim with sharks at Seaworld. I don't have a great fear of sharks, and when you look at the statistics of how many people they kill each year (about 5, compared with hundreds of thousands from drugs, traffic accidents, etc), there really is no reason for anyone to be terrified of them. Think about it - people swim in oceans all the time (particularly in shark feeding zones), and less than 10 people each year are killed by sharks? People have greater respect for the territory of elephants, and they kill more people each year than sharks do. Ridiculous.

The film was really an eye opener to the treatment of sharks, and in particular the finning business. I was so appalled. I am now trying to work out a way I can assist somehow (financially or otherwise). Sea Shepherd are one of the only organisations fighting for the protection of sharks. Millions of sharks are killed each year, many inhumanely, and hardly anything is being done about it. As the film says, if they are wiped out, humans are at great risk, because the fish populations below them (which they currently control) will go out of control, with many feeding on the plankton that produces 70% of the world's oxygen, which we breathe. Imagine what would happen if sharks were wiped out, causing fish populations to explode, eating more of the plankton and thus depleting our oxygen? Catastrophe.

Something needs to be done about this now.

I really do urge you to go and see the film. I swear your opinion of sharks will be changed. They're not manhunters. They just very rarely make mistakes and confuse us for food. It's not intentional. They don't deserve the harsh treatment currently being meted out to them.

www.sharkwater.com; www.savingsharks.com

Rome could have been built in a day

Despite hating the little bastards, I am somewhat impressed by ants right now.

I left my house on Wednesday morning with no trace of anything wrong. I returned on Wednesday night to find a million+ little black ants launching a takeover of my kitchen. I've never even seen one ant in my house in the entire 3 months we've lived there, and on Wednesday night they were pouring out of a crack in the wall near the downstairs toilet, marching over to the bin, and then around it on to the kitchen wall, behind the fridge, coming out the other side and marching into the pantry, with a separate contigent making their way from the bin, across the floor and up the cupboards on to the bench, forming little pools of ants under the lip of the counter top.

I have never seen so many ants in my whole life. This was not a usual ant line of a few hundred ants walking in single file. They were 5 deep, and forming little turnpikes of about 200 ants to serve as way gates or something. It was the oddest thing I've ever seen. Poor Alex was terrified of them and kept going up to one of the pools of them and sniffing and then backing away.

It took 3 hours to get rid of them. I didn't want to spray them straight up, because that would have been a lot of spray, there were so many of them. I started vacuuming the lines up, but they kept pouring out of the crack in the wall, and out of the pantry on their way back to the nest.

I had to empty the entire pantry out. At this stage, I must say I am eternally grateful to Tupperware for making airtight (and ant-tight, it would seem) containers. They hadn't managed to get into my dry goods, but did seem particularly fond of the caster sugar container - there were hundreds huddled under the rim, eating the few sugar crumbs that were there.

There were thousands of ants in the pantry. I had to take everything out, vacuum the shelves, spray around the perimeter and then clean them of dead ants before vacuuming the containers to rid them of ants and putting everything back in. We'd run out of spray and couldn't control the assault of back up forces coming from the crack in the wall. I had to leave the vacuum cleaner nozzle shoved up to the wall while William went to the shops for more supplies, sucking them in every time one dared come out of the hole. The funniest thing was seeing a new wave of forces pour out of the hole every time I took the vacuum cleaner away to clean the pantry. They were in there waiting for their chance to strike!

The source of their excitement was found on the jar shelf. There were three times as many ants there as the other shelves. We pulled out half the jars and cans before we found the source. Honey. They were all over it. Iron Bark honey, incidentally. There were hundreds of ants on the jar, and they seemed to have found a way in, or at least were packing themselves under the lid somehow, because every time we thought we'd vacuumed the ants up, more would come pouring down the sides. We ended up just throwing it in the outside bin.

They won that battle, but we won the war.

3 hours later, 12 ant baits, 2 cans of spray and a vacuum bag full of casualties, we'd finally beaten them.

The little bastards had built an empire in 10 hours. If humans were that productive, we'd have conquered the universe B.C.

Argh!

Comment from William on the weekend that really made my blood boil (in relation to me mentioning I don't want children, after a comment his mother made earlier at breakfast):

"I'm concerned because now she thinks she's never going to get grandchildren."

What the fuck?! Why should I feel pressured into having children because his mother is scared she won't have any grandkids? Why does she want them anyway? Some arbitrary and pointless feeling of ownership? Bizarre. If she wants another baby to look after, she can adopt one herself, instead of trying to live vicariously through other people. Besides, she has a daughter, so she can pressure her into having babies if she's desperate. I disagree with pressuring (intentionally or not) people into having kids. They're not the ones who have to carry it for 9 months and go through the pain of childbirth. They're not the ones who have to look after it for the next 18 years (at least) and cripple themselves financially and emotionally. They just want to coo over it and then leave when the kid starts crying. Ridiculous. It's not their decision to make. And it's none of their business what William and I do with our lives.

Besides which, William knew from the start when he met me that I don't like kids and I don't want them, so he can hardly say I've sprung this on him out of the blue. I'm pretty vocal in my child-disliking, so it's not like he couldn't have realised the extent of it.

Grr. Why is this subject becoming so prevalent all of a sudden? Why is everyone suddenly so interested in my biological functions? Weird.

However, my exam on Saturday went very well, and now I just have one more assignment due on Wednesday and then there's 3 weeks until finals. And then I only have 2 more subjects to go in my degree! Yayayayayayayayayyayay!

Children don't make you happy

Yes! I always knew I was right to dislike children! So there, breeders! Children don't make you happy, and I will not be "fulfilled" if I have one! And no, I will not change my mind eventually, as you all seem to think. Speaking of which, I think that is perhaps one of the most annoying phrases in the history of ever. "Oh, you'll change your mind one day and have children." What, are you a time traveller? Can you see into the future? What makes you think I want to make my life miserable by having children, and what makes you think I'll make the same mistake you did? Some people just don't have children. We won't change our minds. End of story. I resent the implication that I am some stupid young girl who can't see things clearly (ie, your way) and that once I "mature" I will be different. If I don't like kids now, when I'm nearly 26, and I have no maternal instincts whatsoever, what makes you think it's going to change? Sure, if I was 12 or something, you might have a point. But I have never liked kids and I am far too selfish to ever want such a disruption in my life, so stop making incorrect assumptions about my character.

Oops. Got a bit ranty there. I think that was directed at the lady who works at my newsagent, who's always telling me I'll change my mind and have kids one day. And my grandfather who is in town. He's a broken record. I'm fairly certain I've never heard him say anything other than the following 4 things:

- When am I getting my 10 great-grandchildren? You'll have to start soon, you know.
- I'm covering my beer, in case you put custard in it again (apparently I threatened to do so when I was about 4 or so).
- Various disparaging remarks about my intended profession.
- Various disparaging remarks about other ethnic groups.

I swear sometimes that I was adopted. Well, if it weren't for the physical similarities.

For fuck's sake, just shut up!

God I hate people. I really do.

There's a sign up in this library that says, "This level is a quiet zone."

Can you not read? If you want to chat to your friends, or have a group assignment meeting, then go somewhere else, for fuck's sake. I can't concentrate on my assignments when I'm distracted with counting how many 'likes' you've managed to stuff into one sentence.

So far, my withering stares and the Eyebrow of Doom (TM) have forced 3 groups to move on. Now for the final group.

Still, despite the distractions, I have managed to write 2,500 words for a 1,500 word assignment. And I haven't even covered all the points yet. I hate short assignments. There is no point to them. Why discuss something if you can't discuss it in depth? Makes no sense to me. I suspect I will get up to about 4,000 or 5,000 words before I've finished, and then have to edit out more than half of it. *sigh*

I'd take the laxatives

I was listening to Hack (JJJ) a few weeks ago when they had their food special on. I was particularly interested in the section about anoxerics/bulimics. My mother used to be one, and I've often thought I had a predisposistion for it. In high school, I would not eat at school where people could see me. And I don't eat breakfast. So the first thing I'd have to eat all day would be when I got home from school at about 4. Consequently, my stomach shrank and I could never really eat that much. I weighed about 40-45kgs in grade 12 (but I am very short, so I didn't look like a stick or anything). Sometimes I think it would be a good idea to just not eat if I'm feeling particularly fat one day. And then I tell myself that's a stupid thing to think and move on.

Anyway, this is not a "I have a psychological issue" post. I was just wondering about the intelligence of some of these girls who starve themselves and/or vomit up anything they do eat. I mean, obviously they're not all that bright if they're vomitting up stuff in the first place, but when I heard that bulimics also abuse laxatives, I thought the vomiters must have it all wrong.

This will probably sound like I'm trying to make light of a serious condition (I probably am), or condone it (I'm not), but I really think if I was to develop bulimia, I'd want to take the laxative route. I mean, think about it from a purely multi-tasking point of view. When your head's over the toilet for hours a day, you can't really do anything else. You've just wasted a whole bunch of time that you could have been studying, or whatever. Not to mention that you'd get really bad breath, and your teeth start to rot from the acid.

At least if you were taking laxatives, you could study while you're on the loo, write emails/assigments/surf the web on your laptop, read a book, do your nails, play a DS or PSP or whatever. I just think it's the more practical solution for a bulimic. Although my pet hate is books in the bathroom (I refuse to borrow from libraries for this very reason - I'm scared they've been in someone's toilet), so perhaps I couldn't really do it in any event. Still, I think given a choice of vomitting or pooing, I'd rather poo.