'AITA for making a request that would make a single mom in my class unable to graduate?'
"AITA for requesting to remove my thesis partner from our research, which may cause her not to graduate?"
FluidWishbone6237 writes:
So I (M) am in a college course with only eight people, so we’re all pretty close. For our thesis, we were assigned to work in pairs, and I got partnered with a woman I’ve already worked with on several school projects before. She tends to do things last minute, but she usually gets them done, so I wasn’t thrilled but figured we’d manage.
That changed quickly. We both work night shifts, and she also has a kid. I understand that, and I’ve really tried to be patient. But even with everything going on, I still managed to interview her three times over three months, while she was constantly unavailable.
When it came time to transcribe the interviews (each an hour long), we split the work, but she didn’t do her part. I ended up doing all of it just to keep us from falling behind. Then came encoding, which is the most tedious and time-consuming part of our paper.
We split the work again, and for almost a month, I kept messaging her to finish her part, but she never did. I eventually gave up and just did the whole thing myself. I told our advisor, and they made her pay for the subscription to the software we were using as compensation. But that was the only thing she contributed.
Still trying to be fair, I asked her to handle our thesis defense presentation and script instead. On the day of the defense, the presentation was unfinished, and I had to fix it myself right there in the room. She arrived an hour and a half late, and the script she gave only covered 20 pages for a slide deck with more than 45 slides.
After the defense, we were told to redo the encoding and rewrite chapters 3 and 4 separately so we could compare and combine them. I started mine right away. She, on the other hand, still hasn’t done anything.
I’ve been consistently messaging her to ask for updates and to follow up on her encoding and write-up, but all I’ve gotten is “yeah, I’ll do it,” and still nothing. And I constantly see her active on Facebook and posting stories.
Finally, I asked our advisor if I could submit the thesis under my name only, which would mean she won’t graduate. Now people are telling me I’m being too harsh and should just carry her one last time, but I honestly feel like I’ve carried her through the entire thing already. AITA for doing this, even if it might cost her graduation?
People gave OP their thoughts.
SeraphimKensai says:
Your professor is the a%@^ole for making anyone work with a partner for a thesis. A thesis is supposed to be the culmination of one's study in a field applied to a research project and is meant to assess an individual.
soulangelic says:
I can’t believe there are joint theses in some fields. I’ve never heard of that. What a terribly designed way to defend your graduate degree — why would they do that? Solo thesis work prevents exactly your situation from happening.
3littlepixies says:
Not only did she not contribute, she waited until the last minute every time to inform you thereby increasing your stress. Had she just been up front from the beginning, you could have done all the work with half the stress. She created emergencies you had to handle. NTA.
Embarrassed_Advice59 says:
IMO you’re not being harsh enough. NTA and it would be unfair for her to graduate with a thesis she barely contributed to.