Lets keep this professional.

Today, we had a group project due. We're supposed to capture the essence and atmosphere of the place we picked. My team members were Bones, Sergio, and Kevin. Kevin had provided the group with ideas that could work, but often interrupted me. Not only did he interrupt, but he would not even let me speak after he was finished. I sensed then that this group project would have a bumpy road ahead.

We did the Rice Quadrangle. Kevin's idea was to create this panoramic view of the whole area. We all jumped at the idea and thought it would be amazing if this could be one long collage. Since it was his idea, I decided that it was best to let him do it. He agreed, saying he had this passion for photography. Bones and Sergio were to do the map and the center of the Quadrangle. They bounced ideas off each other and created an interesting composition. I was in charge of the rest. I did the relief, several paintings, and even a newspaper collage. I did each to the best of my ability. None were halfassed and I did them several days before the group project was even due. I felt as if I had to do the most work. I felt like it wasn't fair that everyone else in my group was only doing one thing to contribute and I had to pick up the slack. But I knew I could handle more responsibility.

When I was finished with my part, I went to see how my other group members were fairing. I did not like what I saw at Kevin's desk. It did technically fall under the collage requirements, but the whole effect of the thing was sub par. It was just the same picture layered on top of each other over and over in a line. Nothing dynamic about it. I told him to redo it. He refused. This is when my fuse lit.

When we were in the planning stage, we all agreed on how the collage would look. We were should Kevin examples of what a successful one would look like, but Kevin's wasn't even close to what we were supposed to imitate. It looked lazy. Down right mediocre. I refused to have my name associated with that kind of work. Even my other group members told him that it was bad. After repeating what I wanted him to do several times, he finally gave in and told me he'd redo it. Complete with attitude of course.

This morning, I come in to find that both Bones' and Sergio's work had been done but Kevin was nowhere in sight. He had done nothing over the weekend. Nothing. He showed me the same collage that he was supposed to redo. He didn't take any of my advice into consideration. I was so pissed off that I went ahead and created my own collage. In a mere 5 mins, I had a masterpiece, which made me question why the fuck it took Kevin a whole week to produce bullshit. I attempted to redo his collage, but no avail. Too much damage had been done.

Kevin's collage was supposed to tie in our pieces, but he didn't live up to his boasting. His "passion" for photography obviously was some sort of lie to make himself appear to be cool. I made a huge mistake for assuming that passion equals to talent and skill. What really wounds me up is the fact that the only part Kevin had to do was the photos and he couldn't even do it correctly. At one point, I was like, this is my stuff, done. Where's yours? I then tell Kevin to go type up a paragraph, which is a requirement for the presentation. He comes back an hour later with a copy and paste paragraph consisting of different articles all talking about Rice. Nothing about the Quadrangle. I send him back to redo it two times before I was fed up and ended up typing out the whole thing myself. The dude can't even type a decent paragraph. Not only that, he can't even realize the crap that he had regurgitated. By then I already had lost any hope to salvage this project.

I wanted to punch him in the face. Rip his throat out and chop it up into tiny little pieces. I wanted to strangle him by dangling him from the second floor window by the neck. I can't even explain how absolutely frustrated I was with the final moments of this project. I was furious and frustrated to the point of tears. I had to put my name on that crap. The disappointment and shame that came with it was enough to taint my artistic name.

To top it all off, Kevin is a cheapskate. When we went to Rice and had to pay for 3 dollar parking, He offered to pay, but then asked for a dollar from each of us for compensation. I absolutely refused to give him money. My gas was enough. I should have left him there and forced him to walk. He even made us pay for the photo prints as well, again asking each one of us for a dollar. I'm happy to say that I didn't contribute a dime toward this bastard's fund. I tried really hard to keep it professional. But it's so frackin hard to counter his immature ass while maintaining my cool.

Why do I keep meeting douche-bags?