Busy busy week!

I haven't updated in a long long while! o_O In my defense, it's been a busy week!

In order of what happened:
1) I did a presentation. It sucked.
2) We had a presentation the very next day for the trouble coursework. I'll complain about this one later
3) A new coursework given, so I had to work on it.
4) A meeting for our troublesome coursework group. It sucked. I'll complain about this later too.
5) Dissertation meeting, where I had to finish my literature review (not that I did.. will have to add on to it later!)

Okay, bitching time starts now.

OMFG I can't BELIEVE those *bleeeeeeeep* who were supposed to do our Systems presentation! On Monday we met, discussed our recommendations, and decided to meet on Wednesday so that the presentors can practice in front of the rest of the group for critique and suggestions for improvement. So on Wednesday, right after my presentation, I went to meet them.

The slides weren't even done. It looked like they just barely started! The other two girls came along, one of them having travelled an hour from home just to see the practice presentation. A little while later, the presentors said that they had a lecture, so they couldn't stay anymore to do the presentation. We offered to finish up the slides for them, and they declined, saying they wanted to do it their way since they were presenting. We said okay, and told them to at least practice together once before the actual presentation. Would you believe they hadn't been planning to???

Anyway, they promised to be in school by 9am Thursday, just in case. The 3 of us said fine, we'll see you before the lecture, etc etc. On Thursday morning, at 10.45am (15 minutes before the lecture started - us 3 girls were in a 9am lecture), we met up with one of the presentors (Sophia) and she said that the other girl who was supposed to do the slides wasn't there yet. PFFT 9am my FOOT.

When the other girl (Trang) FINALLY came along, we demanded to see the slides, so we all trooped down to the computer labs. Guess what? THE SLIDES HADN'T EVEN BEEN TOUCHED SINCE WE LEFT THE DAY BEFORE. She hadn't even used the slides which I'd amended abit for animation and stuff! Obviously we panicked.

Luckily, our presentation timeslot wasn't till 12.30pm. So for one hour, we rushed to do everything, trying to add more stuff into the slides etc. But there was something wrong with the slides, and we couldn't save it. I kept trying to adjust it so it would be ok, but the others (read: Trang) kept pushing me away to do her own thing. Ugh. So the one who was supposed to do the slides said she'd just present like that - incomplete, with alot of blank slides and no pictures, diagrams, graphs, charts, nothing. She took her USB and left with Sophia. The three of us were left very upset and panicky and in a daze.

I started playing around with the slides, and I managed to fix it, so Andrea, Sita and I rushed to make it prettier, with animations, graphs, charts, etc. We saved it on another USB and brought it to Trang and Sophia, telling them we'd fixed it. Not like they even looked through to check what was on the slides before they presented! They ended up embarrassing us and making us all look like absolute fools. The last person in the group, who was there, had this look on his face that seemed to say "Why didn't you do any better???". Not "I should've done this, I could do better", but "why didn't you do any better???". Bitch.

That was really the last straw. After the lecture, Andrea, Sita and I stormed straight up to the lecturer and complained (I think that may have been the only reason why we got the marks we did - 12 out of 20, which was quite good considering ours was the worst presentation and we didn't get the lowest marks). She said she'd talk to the only guy in the group, because she's his supervisor for the dissertation and she had a meeting with him later that day anyway. Then she organized a meeting for everyone in the group on Wednesday so that we'd be able to discuss things with a mediator. The three of us went away hoping that she'd be able to do something.

Come Wednesday, we met at the designated time and place, except for Sophia, who didn't turn up for dunno what goddamn reason she had. That meeting was the most useless thing I'd ever heard of. She didn't want to talk about what happened in the past, or for us to point fingers and accuse others, and came up with stupid suggestions that would never work in our group. Hello?? The only reason why we wanted the meeting in the first place was to sort out all that and find out WHY THE HECK they didn't do their work!!!

Ugh, we still ended up distributing our work evenly (read: they won't do it and we'll get stuck doing all of it), and the ppl who didn't do their parts went away smiling like goons, as though they got away with something. I can already tell that they're not going to do their work. If I ever felt murderous before, it's nothing compared to how I feel now.

And to think I used to like Systems last year. This year sucks ass. I tell you, when the time comes for me to do that course review thing for feedback, I'm going to complain and bitch as much as I can.