"AITA for missing a group presentation?"
This happened LAST school year this is NOT a story that happened this school year, yet my friends involved are still pissed off at me and have told all of our mutual friends that I'm a dick and I'm starting to question if I'm an AH.
So, some quick context during the last month of school my history class was assigned a presentation we could do with up to 4 friends and we'd have until the last week of school to do it but we we're never told the date of when we'd actually be presenting (this will be important later.)
But me and my friends were getting great progress done on the presentation and even got close to getting ready to rehearse, but then on Monday, a week before we were due to present, I got the flu, which of course is awful enough just because I would have tons of missing work, but this could screw over the presentation.
I was still working from home and around 4 days later I was back in school and low and behold I missed 2 tests, and I had a shit load of stuff to do and so of course I'm trying to figure everything out and I set the time to make up a test at 9:15, during that class period and I had literally zero idea that was the day we were set to present.
I had still texted my buddies saying, "hey guys going to be out again today, making up a test!" and only one of them responded saying "seriously?" This confused me a lot because I had no clue what the problem was and I immediately responded asking what the problem was, no response.
Test goes by and the hour ends and I head to my next class, and I actually run into one of my friends on my way there and he looks incredibly upset and basically yells "You made us fail jerk" and walked away, none of them have really talked to me or let alone looked at me since then, really wondering if I was in the wrong here.
Not long after posting, OP added more context:
EDIT: I'm going to add a little more to the story because I skipped out a HUGE chunk (the sick period and the morning of the first day I was back). Before I get into that I should add a tidbit about my friends, they don't really do much work so before getting sick I had still written most of what we had (3/5 paragraphs and roughly half the script for the presentation at the point I got sick.)
So, when I got sick me and my friends agreed that they would text me when they found out the presentation was happening (something they just forgot to do or just didn't want to).
I continued to work while sick so that I could guarantee my group could still present and get a good grade and I had tried emailing my teacher and got a pretty half-assed response, so I asked my mom to email him to which she got basically the exact same email.
So, I sent a follow up email, and he just never responded to that one. I eventually finished the script (they had written about four sentences in it for them to say) and the next day I felt good enough to go to school.
The first thing I did when I got to school was go to my counselor around an hour before school started (I used to get to school incredibly early) to figure out what to do about my missing tests, to which he asked which hour I would want to take the test in and because I knew had important stuff in every other class I picked that hour because it's the one that worked best for me.
I then immediately texted my friends letting them know I would be gone during that hour. I later found out they had just skipped everything I had written (which is batshit insane btw because I wrote almost all of it.)
Here's what people had to say to OP:
Scared_Fox_1813 wrote:
INFO: To make sure I understand this properly: you scheduled a makeup exam for a different class during the class period that you’re normally in history knowing you could need to present in that class any day? ETA: if that’s the case why couldn’t you schedule the makeup test so that it didn’t overlap with history class and therefore wouldn’t mess up the presentation?
OP responded:
Good question, my friends had told me if they found out what day they were presenting they'd text me immediately, I thought I was safe due to getting no texts, so I had scheduled a test for the only period I had nothing important to work on (every other class had something important going on that day.) It was huge miscalculations and poor communication on my part.
lunarraffle wrote:
INFO: Why did they fail the presentation? Were all members of the presentation required to present, and failed because you weren't there? Usually teachers would only fail the person who didn't show up for presentation day, not the whole group.
Is it because you were supposed to do a majority of the presentation? Also, what school are you in? Community college, university, high school, etc. It's strange that the teacher wouldn't give a set date for presentations.
OP responded:
From what I understand after speaking with my teacher they decided to skip what I had worked on which was a huge sum of the presentation, there was a rule where one person could be gone but someone else had to read their part and they just didn't do that.
As for school this was freshman year of high school and my teacher not giving dates is pretty usual as he was pretty bad at his job and needed a lot of help from other history teachers.
Someoneyoudontknow70 wrote:
ESH. You knew the presentation was coming up, and you should have made an effort to reach out to your friends and teacher to find out the date and time. Your friends knew the presentation was coming up, and they knew that you were out sick, so they should have made an effort to reach out to you to inform you of the date and time of the presentation.
Your teacher knew that you were out sick, so they should have reached out to you to inform you of the date and time of the presentation. When you didn't show up, the teacher should have reached out to you to reschedule instead of failing your group. I feel like all of you could have behaved more responsibly.
If I was your parent, I would definitely have contacted the teacher to ask why my kid and his group were being failed over an excused absence. I wonder if there isn't more to the story because it seems implausible that the whole group would fail when one member didn't show.
OP responded:
Just some context for that last part: my friends had skipped over everything I had written for the presentation (which was about like 80%) causing them to have read like 4 sentences out loud (most of which were sentences explaining what I had wrote.)
I am very confused on why they did this as they were allowed to just read what I had written and they would've gotten a passing grade. But I do agree better communication should've happened here.
LunaMoonChild444 wrote:
NTA. Based on your comments, the group failed because they didn't read your part, which comprised of 80% of the presentation, which they could have done but chose not to. I would add that information into the body of your post, because without it I think the judgement could go either way.
But as it stands, I don't think you did anything wrong at all. I think you did the best you could catching up on everything with the limited time that you had.
The scheduling wasn't ideal, but I don't think you had many options. Don't worry about your former friends. I know you've been friends for a while, but sometimes people change and move on, and it sounds like you've outgrown them. Just focus on your schoolwork and making new and better friends :)
OP responded:
Thank you for the advice to add that information, I will, but thank you for the feedback!
Fun-Talk-4847 wrote:
Could you not have made up the test before or after school? It seems you were playing catch up but still falling behind. This reminds me of one of those infuriating shows where everything goes wrong because people don't know how to properly communicate.
OP responded:
Unfortunately, no, the test I took was a geometry test and my teacher for that class didn't allow people to come into her room before school starts or when it ends, so this was really my last option.
opalescent666 wrote:
I don't think you're an AH. You made a mistake and fumbled hard. Maybe go to your teacher and explain what happened, and ask for another opportunity to present, if you haven't already?
It also seems like your teacher might be one of those types that is not understanding or considerate of life circumstances. I'm sorry this happened to you, but now you must clean up the mess you unintentionally made. Oops.
OP responded:
Would love to have fixed this (and I did try) but unfortunately this happened last school year and it's still very much prevalent in our friend group, I apologize if I didn't specify that.