like, totally, psych-o

My Psychology grade just went from an A...to a C.
Wanna know why?

Ok, as I've said before, we're graded on a point system, which I call the gold sticker system. Kind of like preschool. There's a total of 400-something points for the semester, and we all start out with zero. Each quiz is worth 10 points, I think, and each paper is somewhere around 30. The other way to earn points is by our "Attendance&Participation" sheets. These are my favorite because we get grade OURSELVES. Yes, every four weeks our prof hands us papers with about ten questions on them. Stuff like,
"How many class periods have you missed?"
"How many class discussions have you participated in?"
"How many questions do you ask per lecture?"
And we get to grade ourselves. It's beautiful. Oh, and ridiculous.
So we turn in assignments, the points are credited to our account, and the percentage of the total possible points that we've racked up by the end of the semester is our final grade.

I'd been doing really well in this class for the entire semester. I have never scored below a 98 on anything I've turned in, and therefore, have had an A. In the course syllabus, one of our assignments is called "The Humanitarian Project." It's divided up into three segments, or 'missions'. Mission #1 was to write a one page paper about humanitarianism, basically talking about if we thought people were inherently good or inherently bad. Mission #2 was to volunteer 8 hours of our time at a humanitarian organization of our professor's choice. Mission #3 was to take what we'd learned from volunteering and rewrite our original paper. We then had to give a presentation to the class detailing what we'd learned about people's hearts and intentions. All of this was a total of 130 points.

Instead of talking about what I think about the assignments and the percentage of the overall grade attached to them (because you can probably guess what I think), I'll just tell you what happened. I wrote the first one page paper in probably 7 minutes and got an A or, 30 points. Great. On to mission 2. The organization I was assigned to was called "Any Baby Can". I'd never heard of it before that, but it sounded really cool and I thought it probably wouldn't be a miserable place to spend 8 hours. Before going, I called them to set up a date and times and generally ask for information about what I'd be doing. They told me I'd need a clear TB test before I started. So I went to the hospital, got my test, faxed them the forms, and set a date to go. A few days before I was scheduled to be there, I was looking over the syllabus for the class and happened to read some very fine print underneath the assignment description. It said, "Mission #2 must be completed in groups of 5 or more (from the class) and must be completed before April 16." Great. So I had to find five other people from class who had been assigned to the same place.

At the next class (this was the last week of March), I tried to find everyone who had been assigned to Any Baby Can and was very annoyed to learn that I was the only one of us who was even thinking about that assignment. People, we have 3 weeks to coordinate at least 5 people's schedules and spend 8 hours at this place, it's a third of our grade and you're not worried about getting this done??! So I got everyone's phone numbers, told every single one of them that they'd need a TB test before going, and wrote down everyone's available days. I called the place and I scheduled all 5 of us for a Saturday a week and a half away.

The Friday before we were supposed to go, I called everyone in my group to make sure they were coming. After all, I wouldn't get a grade if every single one of them didn't show up. What do I hear on the phone? "Oh, I like totally like forgot to get that like, um, whatever- you- call- it test done. Oh yeah, the TB test. Yeah, like totally forgot." I tried to take deep breaths and speak as graciously as I could, "Ok, would you please get that done on Monday so we can go next Saturday?" Everyone assured me they would have it done on Monday. I rescheduled us for the next Saturday.

Next Friday rolled around and I called everyone again to remind them of our plans the next day. (The deadline for completion was on that next Tuesday.) What do I get? "Oh my gosh, I was like, at my boyfriend's house like ALL week and oh my gosh! we, like, had such a good time! Oh yeah, and I like totally just totally forgot to get that test done. Do you like think that, like, I'll fail the class? I like already have like a D or something."

What's the result if you can't do the second part of the assignment? You can't do the third part. 100 points, gone.

Maybe I'm simple minded and living under a rock, but shouldn't I be responsible for my own work and not for the work (or lack thereof) of 18 year old highschool dropouts?