u/Disastrous_End6080

Alright, you know how everyone loves group projects and how amazing it is to be forced to work with a bunch of strangers who don't care about what’s being done or how it affects your grade? Yeah, I don't miss high school either. But the odd thing is that I've had a surprisingly lucky history with group projects where I was able to avoid the lazier classmates and generally got assigned to people who cared about contributing to the final project. That was until the debate assignment.

I don't like arguing with people but the idea behind this debate was we'd discuss a serious topic civilly and try to make points for both sides. My group had 5 students with 3 girls and two boys including me, and our topic was if crossbows should be allowed during bow hunting season for deer. What side I was on doesn't matter. What matters is the girls teamed up into one side of the debate, and me and the other boy were opposing them. This is where the trouble began.

For anonymity I'll call this guy Dave. I agreed to split the work 50/50 as one would expect. Now if you’ve been in this kind of situation before you can guess what happened. Dave decided that he was not legally obliged to do anything whatsoever. No matter what task it was, whether it be research, organizing notes, making counter points, no matter if it was big or small, Dave would not do it. The only time he ever did any “work” was when we were in class, but he moved at such a snail’s pace you’d swear he was sabotaging on purpose.

I was very verbal to him. I constantly begged Dave to work on his parts of the project, and he always gave the same response. He’d shake his head up and down and go “yep, I got it” then continue his crusade of being a waste of space. I would email him constantly to please get work done but he never checked his school email ever so that fell onto deaf ears. After a while I realized that Dave wasn’t going to do anything, so I knew I’d have to do everything myself. It got so bad that the girls on the other side of the debate agreed to help me with the work.

The day of the debate was pretty uneventful as a bunch of high school students went to the front of the room and debated some topic they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about, my group included. But as I was sitting there my frustration grew. It didn’t matter how politely I’d ask Dave to do his work he didn’t, so I decided to tell him how I felt after the class was over. As everyone was packing up their stuff and getting ready to leave, I walked over to him and told straight to his face, “You’re useless”, and left.

At the time I felt justified and thought Dave wouldn’t care but it’s something that I reflect on often. I hadn’t gone to the teacher for help in this so would that have changed anything? Did it affect him personally or did Dave forget? I guess I just need closure to know if I was the asshole for calling someone I barely knew useless after one bad project with him.