Sometimes Missing School Pays Off

Is there anyone out there who enjoys/enjoyed doing group projects and presentations in school? I'm actually very curious because I have never met anyone that liked them, or even saw the point of them. I think I can speak for Justin (as we have talked about it many times) and myself, that doing group projects and presentations are one of the WORST things EVER. We HATE them. (I would also like to point out that presentations, even solo ones, are also one of the worst things ever.)

One of the things that teachers/professors claim is that group projects are to better socialize their students...that group projects help everyone to get to know everyone else, and isn't that nice? They say that group projects teach students what it's going to be like in the "real" world, where everyone has to interact with other people in the workplace. If pressed, I might say this is true for young kids, in elementary school and middle school, you know, the kids that never say a word to anyone else...who never have any friends...who end up bringing a gun to school and shooting up the place...Maybe if that kid's teachers had forced him to do a group project with other kids, he would have met other kids and learned to love them, not want to kill them. Hmm...something to think about.

However, I am an adult. I am raised. I am socialized. This is college, people! We are at a university for higher learning! HIGHER learning! So, when Justin and I looked at the syllabus for our Script Analysis class, and it said "Historical Presentations" on it, we decided if it was a group thing, we would bail on the way to research in the library. If you're going to treat us like children, we are going to act like children. It comes very naturally for us. Well, it WAS a group thing.

Okay, okay, the situation can still be salvaged! Come on, Teach, you know the one thing that will make this better! Come on, let us pick our own groups! Ugh

(please imagine, if you can, the most annoying and exaggerated voice you possibly can) "Now I'm going to count you off, starting in the back, to put you into groups! 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. etc. Okay, okay, now I want all the "ones" up here, the "twos" there, the "threes" there, and the "fours" back there! yea!" Then he handed out the "topics" and we were stuck. No way we could bail on the way to research in the library. Our groups had seen us, it was too late.

dun
Dun
DUN.

Hm...so, I don't know if you've noticed but, I can get pretty dramatic in my story-telling. I probably could have told you all this in about 3 sentences, but where's the fun in that? It is getting pretty long, though. Maybe I can speed up the rest of the story. Here we go!

so, justinandi were in differentgroupsBLEH and there wasnoescaping. Wedidn'tbail, weplannedand researchedwithour groups. Therewasone moreresearchday beforepresentationsstarted. But,ohhowilovemyhusband,JustinwasSick the nextclassperiod!! Darn! don'tyouhatewhenthathappens? wemissedclass,missedthepresentations,missedthestupid stupidgroupassignment! Yea! imeandarn!

Now, this is a very tricky business, as you all probably know. Missing a big assignment like that can have huge consequences that you might never be able to make up. But, from the title of this post, you can probably surmise that this wasn't the case for us. We went up to our teacher after class on the day we returned and he gave us a new assignment to make up for it. And the assignment was to write a 3-page paper on how Shakespeare's "Hamlet" has been translated into movies. And best of all, NO presentation at all! It was all we could do not to skip out of there in glee! So, the lesson learned is that sometimes missing school pays off.