u/DrpyChatty

Fanatical's got a deal right now where you can get Rain World + Downpour, but I'll be giving away just the basegame key here. I can't guarantee it works in every country as I bought it under a European account, so take that into consideration before participating.

Your ONLY requirement is to comment a fun fact about your favorite real world animal. I'll start with TWO: Cookiecutter sharks are parasitic in nature, AND the most bioluminescent shark of the family!

The giveaway ends on Tuesday. Be sure to have your DM's available and notifications on because I'm only giving it a 24 hour period before I reroll the wheel if I don't get a response from the winner.

pretend i'm not nudging a link to my Twitch trying this game out as a new player right now https://www.twitch.tv/drpychatty/schedule (i feel like such a nerd promoting this)

le proof of Moderators™

https://preview.redd.it/0rjegbk3v40h1.png?width=359&format=png&auto=webp&s=36656c0647635bff8547e13a258f4581ee0dce3a

I'm sick and tired of how in educational settings, you'll always be pushed into some kind of group project just because "in the real world, you'll have to work with other people too" without understanding and acknowledging the nuance of the situation nor the subject of what the people in question are working on.

Without fail, every single time I have ever been in a group for a project, the other people are one of the following:

1. Has no knowledge of the subject/task
2. Has no interest in working on said project
3. Is an active hinderance to the very project itself

There is NO project in school that NEEDS two or more people. More often than not, it's just a glorified list of assignments meshed together to excuse "needing more hands" when it's really just a bunch of things you can work on and off without needing to deal with the other person potentially being an issue more than the project itself is. In no world do I have to take a 3 hour break because the other person in my project is DRAWING the slides and decides to call me on an unknown number an hour before it's due to tell me they were taking a mental health break because "you were really mean to me about how we needed 4 drawings instead of 18" as if I hadn't cut the workload for her. The drawings weren't even meant to be anything more than simple quick blobs, but here she was fighting it like they had to be Leonardo's very private collection alongside information about gastrointestinal therapy.

See, I would at the very least appreciate if these assignments acknowledged the issue of leadership and differences in a work force, but more often than not, you're simply graded on having done The Subject, not having been A Team. I should not be penalized for working with the bottom of the barrel and coming out with lackluster results. I should at the very least be scored for trying to push through with that slog instead of being given a "Why didn't you just carry them to the finish line instead?" talk. It does nothing but teach resentment to the person this is given to, and make them more cold to their colleagues in a working environment. Friendliness is no longer expected of you if your only focus is knowing the people you're sitting down with are either good or bad for your personal gain as a whole.

Every single time, and I emphasize every single time here, going as far back to primary school as someone who has completed college, EVERY PERSON I'VE WORKED WITH HAS DONE ZILCH TO THE WORK, BUT A HUNDRED ON MY PSYCHE.

Let me tell you about some of my "best" group projects.

During my first year of college, I had to work with 5 other students for a presentation about workplace diversity and the LGBTQIA+. 3 of the students were heavy bigots and wanted nothing to do about working on a presentation where they would have to do any level of research or "good mouthing", leaving me with 2 other "coworkers" who consisted of 1 being so pedantic of every detail that even getting one slide done after an hour of research meant re-doing it all just because he saw one little caveat about it on some other article we weren't making anything from, and the other desperate to hold the leadership position while being such a doormat that you'd confuse her for never taking a shower.

This, unsurprisingly, meant I had to deal with taking proof of all discussions from text and physical to the teacher and coordinator just so I could get marks on my own paper rather than having to take the fall with the rest of these clowns. And you can bet your ass they didn't like me selling them short. Apparently I should've just FAILED with them.

For a second taste, still in that SAME year of college, I had to do a physical demonstration about a made-up game for some beginner level drama class, and the two people I was unwillingly paired with were literally the most troublesome people of the entire course. One didn't even show up for half the year, and when he would, always got kicked out of the class 5 minutes in, and the other just didn't even do any of the work and wouldn't stop complaining about how much he had no interest in doing anything for drama. And you already know the person who paired us was none other than the teacher who knew fully well these two would not do jack fucking shit.

Give it a week, I'm desperately trying to at the very least, get them to respond to my pleas for working together on Teams so I can send that shit over to the teacher and coordinator, but I couldn't even have that. So there I was having to do the physical, a task that required your OTHER group mates... not having shown up at all. And who took the nlame? ME apparently. I should've showed "more initiative" or some other garbage. I can't be bothered to look back at the logs on that one, it's probably a stupider reason than that. The teacher made no effort to even acknowledge her mistake for thinking the people she KNEW would do nothing DID nothing, I'm not in the mood for Devil's Advocate here.

This was before GenAI became rampant, and I dread the thought of how much worse things are now in group projects if my dough heads for groupmates had access to ChatGPT telling them cookie dough is also a material in... I don't fucking know, glass blowing for my class of introduction to art.

Back to my point though, I am still struggling to find a single instance of someone in a group project getting anything good out of it with someone they didn't at the very least, already know substantially. Every single person I have ever spoken to about this subject gives me the same few horror stories that I'm just convinced we all put up with this when it has no reason to keep going other than handicapping the good few with the garbage that needs to be taken out before the end of the year.