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In this world, it’s every man for himself. You can’t let others hold you back. The OP should have worried about himself before worrying about his “idiot partners”.</p>
<p>^ Pretty brutal view - so basically the lesson here is that I need to toughen up and put myself before others? Interesting lesson.l</p>
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no, you need to learn how to be a leader and not a follower. you really should have been the leader of the group if you really that much better at math than your peers are.</p>
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that’s irrelevant. yes anyone would feel cheated in this situation but that doesn’t mean that he or she would be right.</p>
<p>Since you’ve already explained the situation to your teacher, and she said you can’t make up the points, pursuing the matter will probably just breed bad feelings. Do you need A+'s for all quarters, or just the semester grades? Does the midterm pull up your grade at all?</p>
<p>I mean, I would be mentally kicking myself over this too, but your teacher isn’t obligated to give you another chance just because your group misunderstood directions (plus, it seems like only your group made this mistake).</p>
<p>The only teachers who ever offered group tests in my high school classes were my foreign language teachers. Both of them said that people usually do worse on group tests or stay at the same level. I don’t think group tests are good ideas, since it’s not the responsibility of good students to pull up other students’ poorer grades, and if students are given a chance to work by themselves, there’s really no tactful way to say you’d prefer to work alone without sounding snobby (if you’re one of the good students).</p>
<p>Working in groups can also be frustrating, especially when you’re working with people who aren’t as motivated as you. I was the neurotic overachiever who put together the final product so that I could look over everyone’s work. The next time you have to take a group test and are the strongest member of the group, I suggest you assign the hardest questions to yourself (and then explain how you did them to your group members). And, of course, ask the teacher for clarification if there’s any confusion.</p>
<p>@ demeter - interestingly enough, only my foreign language teachers give group tests too.</p>
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I didn’t mean to sound brutal. If your running out of time, get the work done and then you can explain later. You have to be sure you get the work done. The teacher needs to be doing her job and teaching them how to do it. It’s not your job to teach them.</p>
<p>That’s the downside of group tests. You still have plenty of time to get your grades back up… you can hope for a lot more tests this quarter. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound like your teacher is willing to budge :(</p>
<p>If it were me, I’d just explain what happened to the teacher. If she agrees to a retake, great, but from the way you put it, she sounds strict. If she doesn’t, just get over itand vow to work super -hard for the rest of the quarter. If there’s one stupid mistake I’ve learned from, it’s not to argue with what the teacher says.</p>
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<p>I was the leader of the group, and as such a good leader cares about his constituents, and I was helping them learn the math as well since they had questions about such. Looks like my good-heartedness wasn’t worth it after all - I should have just left them flabbergasted and stupid and given them all a undeserved 100. </p>
<p>Anyways, I’ve decided I’ll just get a 100 on everything else for the rest of the quarter, and in the end if she just gives something stupid like just one more quiz this quarter or something, thus preventing me from doing better, I’ll discuss it with her. In life you gotta learn to deal with unfair situations.</p>
<p>Don’t get defensive. You demonstrated leadership, but ~effective~ leadership? Still, we can’t fairly place all the blame on you as you received inaccurate information. I think you did well with what you were given, but you could’ve done better of course. Life isn’t always smooth, and this will just prepare you even further for the future 
Someday when you’re working and heading a project and money is on the line, this memorable experience will be worth the trouble. I’m rooting for you!</p>
<p>Just go up to them and cry…ALWAYS WORKS!</p>
<p>Hm thanks. The only reason I was/am very concerned about this test is because the teacher, depending on her mood during the quarter, sometimes offers a lot of tests and sometimes only offers 1 or two tests, thus making those grades basically your quarter average. Hopefully she’ll give out more tests this quarter, but yes I suppose I have learned a lesson - don’t trust other people without good verification and proof.</p>
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i’m glad to see that you’ve changed your attitude bud. good luck!</p>
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<p>The fact remains that you will have to work with “idiots” on very important things, and sometimes, true leadership is understanding that you are to serve no man before yourself. Seems awfully harsh, I know, but the fact remains that you magnanimously decided to help them understand the material rather than just going with what you know to be right. Sometimes you have to understand when people are beyond the point of being helpful and are just acting as an anchor, dragging down the group with them. Since this was a test, with a fixed time limit, it was your perogative to help them along, no one forced you. </p>
<p>Whenever my AP Stat teacher would give us group tests (and he did every so often) I would quickly asses the abilities of my group members and decide if I could trust their judgements or not. If I could, I would delegate some work to them and then go over it briefly before we turned it in. If not, I told them to help me on my problems. They were to look over my work and help me if I had problems. That was it. There was an understanding that I could be an unmercifull jerk during our tests, if it was realted to the material and our grade, and I would later apologize. I regreted acting like an a** during our tests only afterwards, but for the most part, no one ever brought it up (because we always got near perfects). I remain close friends to people whom I said pretty mean stuff during our tests because they understood it was necessary to succeed. </p>
<p>An old Jewish saying goes that “if I am not for myself, who will be for me?” You would benefit by remembering that. Don’t drown in a sea of self sacrifice.</p>
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i’m not sure if that was the issue… the OP just didn’t hear/follow the teacher’s instructions. the whole having to teach the other kids thing is irrelevant because even they had been able to do the test on their own without the OP teaching the material to them, they all probably would have made the same mistake since the issue is that none of them heard the teacher’s instructions.</p>