Polyphemus the Penguin (and other reasons I hate working in groups)

Today, a group of us from my English class got together to work on our project for The Odyssey, because it’s due on Tuesday and we hadn’t even started yet.

On Wednesday when we got the assignment, we agreed to meet at 10 a.m. on Saturday and stay until 4 p.m. to try and get the work finished. Problems arose with transportation, but to my knowledge they were resolved quickly and efficiently. Since the assignment was to create a presentation that illustrated Chapter 9–the part where Odysseus fights the Cyclops Polyphemus and escapes by riding underneath the bellies of the sheep–I knew it would be difficult, and read the chapter several times to get an understanding of events.

Fast forward to this morning. One girl’s twenty minutes late, another’s an hour late. All three of them hadn’t even touched the reading, although two of them had the foresight to print the SparkNotes page. They have no idea what we’re doing, launch off the day by going on Facebook to compare profile pictures and friend counts, and seem surprised when I try to start recording the feast scene between the king and Odysseus.

The three of them decided that it would be too much work to make a video (like we’d agreed on last week), so they want to make a “comic book” instead, but use pictures instead of drawings. Since this idea wasn’t approved by our English teacher, one sends off an email to Mr. Q. (It was never returned.)

I bring my tunic, breeches, and two swords, and one of the other girls has some pirate costumes. We mix and match between all four of us until we look somewhat like Homer-era characters.

More procrastination ensues. We take four pictures–basically three of us sitting around a table with wine glasses toasting Odysseus’ return from Calypso’s clutches. Then it’s time for lunch, so *we* decide to take an hour and a half break, going back to the fondue fountain for seconds.

After lunch, someone gets the idea that working around the house is boring and it would be a lot more “realistic” to shoot the cave scenes at the park. One of the girls finds a penguin costume in the closet and decides to be a Penguin-Cyclops, refusing to participate in the project until she’s allowed to wear it. (Keep in mind, none of them have actually done the reading. She only knew there was a Cyclops because I told her.)

It’s probably a three-mile walk to the park, all through residential neighborhoods. We’re all dressed as pirates/kings, except for the Penguin-Cyclops, and somebody brought an iPod with a speaker system so they’re all dancing to Ke$ha and LMFAO.

Once we finally reach the park, there’s an Amish family reunion (or something?), so we have to walk another mile to another park. We shoot less than 20 pictures–mostly Penguin-Cyclops glaring at Odysseus with her single shojo-anime eye.

It looked like that because no one else was willing to draw it, and I can’t do anything scary or ominous.

We only got half the shots we needed, they decided to let me PHOTOSHOP all the missing elements in even though I reminded them that I have no idea how to photoshop, and it’s due on Tuesday. There’s a lot more to it, but that’s the gist.

How was YOUR Saturday?