The ‘Need’ Of The Many

(Going to school for computer programming – the second-to-last group to have the course as it is before being revamped to all-web-based programming – we have a succession of teachers for each programming language. The final course is Java, and while the teacher is nice and actually helpful, his instructions are lacking. It is during the two weeks we have to finish our final project, where the two current classes have been merged into the larger lab, and the teacher’s not in the room at the moment.)

Me: “UGH, how are we supposed to do all this?!”

Other Group: “What do you mean?”

Classmate: “How are we supposed to set up 30 programs in two weeks?! The first batch are easy but the rest are taking two to three days each!”

Other Group: “You don’t need to do all 30!”

Us: “WHAT!?”

(We get the FULL instructions from the other group. When the teacher comes back, he gets bombarded.)

Me: “Why didn’t you tell us we only needed to do [the number from each section]?!”

Teacher: “I did!”

Classmate: “No, you didn’t!”

Classmate #2: “I even asked you last week how we were supposed to get ALL THIRTY done!”

Teacher: “The cover sheet for the packet had the full instructions!”

Us: “WHAT COVER SHEET?!”

(Turned out he gave Class #2 the cover sheet, which said how many programs from each section to do and how much of each section to work, as well as the fact that it counted as 50% of the entire course’s grade, but neither gave us that copy nor said anything… And we didn’t learn this until there was about three days left. Nobody was given extensions, nor extra credit for the extra work already done. It was a miracle several of us were able to rush through what we ‘needed’ to do!)