Too Honest By Half

For our final project for my Chem II class, we have to make a PowerPoint about an assigned material, and we are assigned groups for it. Admittedly, I am that group member throughout the project; instead of working on research when we are given time for it in class, I work on some other final work for other classes that I am behind in. (This was before I had much of an at-home work ethic, since the ADD meds I was taking at the time tended to wear off before I got home.)

Here’s the catch: One part of the project is a group evaluation, and there is a section of it where you can mention if one group member wasn’t pulling their weight. If enough other members of the group rat them out, the slacker will lose 20 points.

I know I am screwed on that front, so I decide to at least go out with a little bit of dignity and essentially turn myself in, explaining what I had done for the majority of the work time instead of actually helping my group. I know, that doesn’t excuse me doing it to begin with, but I felt better not trying to play innocent.

When we get the sheets back, I am not surprised to see everyone else has written my name down on their group evaluation sheets under the “Who was the slacker?” section. What did surprise me was, next to my confession, the teacher had written, “Thank you for the honesty!” and had only removed 10 points instead of 20!

I later found out that it was more complex than just cutting the lost points in half — instead, he had taken away as many points as he could get away with taking without letting my overall grade drop below a B, which is what I had in the course prior to this project. It just happened to work out to half.