The pain of group projects

I had a class where I was paired up with this well-known stoner as part of a group project. Research and an oral presentation on Miranda rights. Each of us were responsible for 50% of the grade of the other, and if he did nothing, and I got a straight A, I'd still get an F because the borderline for F was 64% back then. After class, I went up to the teacher and begged to be paired with someone else, but her response was to "inspire" the other student.

So I did all the research, and the stoner, to whom everything was "no problem, man... it's all good! Relax, dude!" did absolutely nothing except give excuses. "When was the library meetup? Oh, sorry, man. I flaked, dude." And so on. His attendance record was barely enough not to get expelled.

So I did 100% of the project, did his part, and just wrote him notecards to read off of. No matter how many times I told him the plan, he seemed to forget. All he had to do was read the fucking index cards. I even had a spare copy to give him should he "flake" and leave them at home. The night before, I met up with him at a party to go over it one more time. He was slightly drunk, but actually seemed to retain everything and care. He also apologized for all of his absences. I didn't believe it, but I didn't want to start a fight. He said he'd be there in class that following Monday.

He didn't show. But due to a stroke of luck, our report was delayed due to another report before ours completely fucking up in some way during the Q&A portion. Stoner was there the next day, his voice lowered an entire octave apparently due to some kind of self-diagnosed alcohol poisoning (?). He seemed aware we had a report, forgot his cards of course, and was happy I handed him a spare pair. He said he got this, and had a surprise for me.

I did my end of the report. I sort of did his, too, fearing what this "surprise" might be. Then it was his turn to speak, and he got up to the lectern and the first thing he did was throw all the notecards into the air. The shithead of a stoner then went into a speech on how to end communism (this was in 1987, before the Iron Curtain fell), based on some famous author, and it involved dropping Monopoly games from parachutes into small Russian towns. I shit you not. He was so proud of himself, because he hijacked what he considered unimportant to educate all that were listening about this brilliant idea. I mean, he gave it his all. It would end war, bring peace, and no more threat of nuclear war.

I wanted to die. When his allotted 15 minutes were up, none of it touching Miranda rights, the teacher had to practically scream at him to shut him up and take his seat. Eventually, the constant interruptions derailed him, he kind of forgot what he was saying, and sat down next to me, beaming with pride.

I got a C. I got 100% and since I had done his written portion for him, he got 50%, which meant we both got 75%. Later, I explained to the teacher I had NO idea why he did that, and she seemed to understand what happened. She said she gave me an artificially high grade so I'd get a C. He got an F, because she guessed he did NOT write his portion of the report, but didn't want to flunk me as well.

"I could tell you did what you could to make the best of a bad situation."

/r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu Thread Link - imgur.com