I usually feel rather guilty leaving physics lab, because by Friday I'm completely wiped out, which means I'm the least contributing member of the team. But this Friday, I felt guilty for an entirely different reason.
You see, this week the shoe was on the other foot, in the most extreme sense possible.
For those who don't know (and really, there's no reason you should), each week we're assigned to groups of three to complete the labs activities. These usually involve a fair degree of programming and/or calculation, after which we stumble out with completed assignments and (in my case, at least) an utter lack of comprehension. The entire course seems to be a mass of anti-conceptual nonsense, but that's beside the point.
This week, I had an interesting group arrangement. I'd never worked with these two individuals before (each week is usually that way, unless we retain the previous week's groups). These two, however, proved to be quite interesting.
One of the group, a girl of I believe subcontinental origin, had all but completed the lab beforehand (as I would do if I had time--but in this instance I actually had time, but used it for a more entertaining purpose). There were plenty of mistakes, but they were corrected with a fair amount of ease once the ever patient TAs pointed them out.
The other in the group, however, was the precise intellectual opposite, as I'll explain as follows.
Now, we may have gotten off on the wrong foot, I'll happily admit. The purpose of this lab was to calculate a number of quantities based off our jumps (yes, physical crouch and leap jumps) using the energy principle. This fellow, rather jockish in nature, mocked my attempt. I used so unintegrated excuse, mostly out of fatigue, but ironically our jumps had the same displacement (though he was shorter).
But that would be a minor annoyance on it's own, certainly not worth an extended blog entry that no one will read. But the young man in question made no contribution, not the slightest hint of effort at contributing, throughout the remainder of the lab. He made a few halfhearted attempts at conversation, irrelevant, regarding the fact that someone had brought a few basketball players back to his fraternity the night before. While some might see the probable lack of sleep from this incident as an acceptable excuse. Priorities, man! I at least got about 7 hours that night, though I will admit I overslept and missed part of my first lecture.
And so, you see, the other two of us carried him on our shoulders. We played Atlas.
You see, I should have shrugged, told the TA he didn't make any input, and before that, should have asked him to do some of the work. But I didn't. I accepted my role as a producer supporting a consumer.
This, in fact, illustrates the greater trend. The basketball players that he spoke of are most certainly consumers more than producers. Our entire economy, it is clear to me, is based around the idea of supporting the unproductive, especially the beloved celebrities. We're not a capitalist nation anymore. Were we ever?
I'm not going to make that mistake again. I won't play Atlas for people anymore. For the time being, this producer is on strike.
