#public speaking SUUUUCKS

[shidoukanae]

Fuck this group project. I’m probably just getting pissed and petty for no real reason but it annoys me that we were all supposed to delegate out jobs to each other and then in the end my job got usurped by someone else??? 

Like, the reason why we were given different jobs was so we could each work on different things and be able to contribute to the group in meaningful ways. I was assigned to work on the Powerpoint alongside someone else. That was our contribution to the group out of a team of five members (the others of which were to work on the flier, the brochure, and the outline for our powerpoint) and, yet, somehow the whole group became in charge of the powerpoint which??? was not the point of delegating out jobs??? 

So, anyways, I put myself in “charge” of three slides: the title slide, the “why you should train your dog” slide (our presentation is about training a dog which is ironic because I’m the only group member without a dog. Granted, I signed myself up for this when I agreed to the topic but...*sigh*), and the Pavlovian’s Dog slide. 

I admit I am only in charge of the last slide because it is the only slide I claimed that I would speak for (since it seemed no one had bothered to research Pavlovian’s dog even though one of our group members boasted being into the “Science” of our topic >:O) and the title slide was more “up for grabs” and the second slide I just unwittingly came in charge of because no one else cared.

However, what irritates me the most is that all the slides I worked on were changed in some way. The title slide was changed and that one I will let slide because the way I had set-it up required knowledge of an inside joke regarding how to train your dragon and was worded awkwardly. That I will admit was something that needed to be changed. However, what irks me is the other two slides.

For the “why you should train your dog” slide, let me just say that that slide WAS added in by ME because NO ONE thought to even due an introduction on WHY you would want to train your dog not to mention that it wasn’t even apparently on the outline which I NEVER SAW because our group member who was working on it never GAVE it to the rest of us DESPITE having a Google Docs shared between ALL OF US for the EXACT PURPOSE. Also, I made the slide in a specific manner, with bullet points that listed the reasons to train a dog from top to bottom and pictures corresponding to the bullet points from top to bottom in a left to right fashion. I also had three bullet points and, as I checked on it today, there are now four. Here are what they say:

?

??

????????

The first and last bullet point are practically the same thing in the eyes of someone who doesn’t want to scroll through a dictionary. When you train a dog to do something, you are expecting that they will behave in a certain way and are likely doing it to get rid of problematic behavior. This coincides with manners because when you think of manners in the context of a training a dog, you think of making the dog behave in a proper manner. I get that the fourth bullet point is probably a more better way of explaining this (while the first bullet point, mine, is a longer-winded and probably too-long version) but if that’s the case then don’t just add a redundant line that sounds similar if not the EXACT SAME to someone who cares to know the EXACT difference between BEHAVIOR and MANNERS.

Not to mention but, the three pictures that correspond to the first three bullet points I originally had??? one of the pictures was taken away and replaced with a picture of a dog which I am 100% certain is one of my group member’s dogs since one of them mentioned owning a bull dog and all four of the rest of my group agreed to put pictures of their dogs on each slide possible. I get that it’s a cool idea, that you want to show off your dogs, but please for the love of - don’t mess around with a slide that you never worked on and don’t just take down a picture someone else put on there and then just rearrange them without knowing the reason why I put them there in the first place.

>:(

It gets better and I’m not even to the fun-fact stuff yet.

On slide three, the slide I explicitly stated I was going to present (and, therefore, work on), I admittedly grew a bit petty and got to the point I am just tossing up my hands and saying “fuck it”. Because, you see, I laid my page out specifically so I could gesture to the image and use the Powerpoint layout in an effective way of explaining my point - with the “unconditioned stimulus” the food, being on the left side of the diagram that correlates with food (and thus making up the portion of the diagram that’s not labelled with “food” clearer) while on the right side I had a picture of a bell to signal the “neutral stimulus” that would become the “conditioned stimulus” seen on the right side of the diagram.

If you want a visual representation, here’s how my slide looked:

It’s simple, it gets my point across better because the dog treats and the bell help to emphasize my points, and overall I like the look of it. The side of the diagram concerning the food (the left side) has food on its left. The side of the diagram concerning the bell (the right side) has the bell on its right. It better reinforces the topic ideas and also gives a better food visual than the one on the diagram which reminds me eerily of spaghetti every time I look at it. 

And, well, here’s how it got changed at first:

This is not the exact replication but, as I changed it already and wasn’t going to the full effort to do the same layout whoever changed it had done, the above image is approximately how the changed version looked. The pictures were purposely moved and overlapped (whoever changed my slides on the powerpoint had an irritating tendency to overlap all the pictures possible in a way I guess can be considered “cutesy” but does not help the purpose of the diagram or aligns with my original intent. 

So, out of more of a petty whim and to rearrange the slide back into the order that I had purposely arranged it into, I returned it back to the state as was shown in the first picture.

It got changed again. The picture, this time, looked a little bit different but with the same aesthetically touches of overlapping:

First of all, shouldn’t you at least ASK if it’s okay to change this slide? Once I can tolerate with a sigh but twice gets kind of irritating. However, if they don’t want to keep it the way I had presented it (and because we can’t talk to each other until Monday anyways - the same day we present) I ended up changing the picture so that it doesn’t cause any more problems:

There. No picture of a bell or dog treat to mess around with. We can all be happy now - you don’t like how I laid out the pictures on my slide then - fine - I’ll just take them away and we won’t have to worry about overlapping any pictures and it gets to look plain and boring with a side of spaghetti-looking dog kibble sitting there for the audience to stare at with raised eyebrows as I explain my side. Okay, whatever. I’m interested to see if they’ll try to re-add the pictures but, hopefully, now that they are gone whoever is changing my slide won’t have to worry about changing my mistake back again. 

And, I’m not quite finished. Yes, I am quite bitter about this. I’m a very tolerant person, very easy-going and I usually am passive when people try to take control like this. In fact, if it were only these things that I had observed, I might have ignored them and moved on bc, honestly, I don’t think they matter. But I’m petty and after meeting with my group on last Wednesday, my level of sympathy has dropped a lot.

I like to be in productive groups. I like to be productive. When I met with my group on Wedsnesday, I expected us to be productive when it was obviously clear we hadn’t gone anywhere yet because no one in the group had worked on anything and I hadn’t had time to do so between dealing with insurance people, doing Biology homework, and being caged in college until six pm with an occasional on-campus job to work at and without the ability to get on my computer. No one in our group had sent out emails that would have allowed me to progress with my end of the project, anyways. The person who was supposed to do the outline (which I NEED to do the powerpoint that I THOUGHT I was going to be working on with ONE other person) never did sent it to any of us and I can’t remember if she was even done with it before we entered class.

Regardless, being naive little me, I expected our relaxed group to quickly push through our work and make decent progress. Nope. We literally sat around on our computers for the first five minutes with them talking about their dogs. Lovely. The first five minutes of hearing about their dogs was okay. I was fine with that. Someone eventually suggested we write down notes of what we wanted to do. I pitched the idea of setting-up a Google Docs. Said person who suggested writing down notes (and, who also sits beside me may I add) suggests she’ll take up the job.

So, I wait for her to do so so we can get started. She’s on her phone, her screen clear for view, and she’s typing a message. I let her type it because maybe she just needs to finish up the message real quick before she can open up google docs and set up a doc for all of us to work on. But, then she went on to showing off pictures of her dog and we all went off-track.

I asked if I could, perhaps, set-up the Google Doc after about six or so minutes of waiting for the girl beside me to do it. Someone agreed that I should do it and I told everyone that I had sent it out so we could get started.

Not one minute later, I hear from the girl beside me:

“Oh, you set up a doc already?”

????

Did you...did you not hear me when I said I had???? Did you not hear me when I asked the group if I could set up the Google Docs because you clearly weren’t doing it?

I just...

*facepalm*

But wait, there’s more!

So, after AGAIN prodding our group to set-up a Google Slides powerpoint so we could FINALLY perhaps start working on everything we need to do, we somehow launch in to the discussion of dog pictures and dog videos and “awwww look how cute this dog is” or “oh! guys! watch this video omg!”. I’m all for dogs. If you like dogs, go ahead and talk about them. But, for the love of all things public speaking, please focus on the fucking task at hand people. You can look at dog pictures and dog videos AFTER we finish our presentation.

Not to mention but, while they were fawning over dogs, I was at least trying to work with what little I had (let me remind you that I had no outline for the Powerpoint available to me because the person who wrote it seemingly REFUSED to email it out to all of us or even put it in the GOOGLE DOCS that was PURPOSELY SET UP TO SHARE INFORMATION JUST. LIKE. THIS so that, at least, those of the Powerpoint could work on the presentation without fucking butchering it. 

And, even when it was agreed that the whole group would work on certain slides (and none of which were assigned to any of us that I can recall except for the Pavlovian Dog’s slide I claimed which means someone could basically slack off and no one would be any the wiser as to who did what or who didn’t do what) she STILL never shared the outline to us so she basically was the one who got ALL the control over the Powerpoint bc the two of us assigned to it were unable to do anything bc how the fuck can we know the game plan if you never give it to us??? TBH, I think my job basically got usurped by someone else who WASN’T my partner so while I DID want to work on this presentation and be helpful, it’s kind of hard when someone else takes control and doesn’t even bother considering that my partner and I should have been working on it, not her. 

I should also mention that, probably since I don’t have dogs and really am not a dog fan, I was basically silent the entire time we were together on Wednesday. No one even bothered to invite me into the conversation anyways - how could I when everyone else had dogs to talk about and all I have are two cats which, clearly, they don’t care about? They spent at least half an hour talking about their dogs, talking about them so much and searching up videos of random-ass dog things like a husky “meowing” that I actually ended up watching the entirety of VRAINS episode 26 (without the sound on, of course) through their entire “discourse”. And, by the time I was done, they were still talking about their dogs and I just...I thought we were supposed to be getting ready for a speech and yet...you’re still talking about your dogs???

It should also be stated at this point that I had at least tried to be a part of the conversation and even try to guide them to be productive but I guess being a quiet person who draws anime stuff and who made a (pretty kick-ass presentation might I say) on fandoms means you get basically ignored. I tried to be as group-friendly as possible but, once I got to the point where I was getting super tired of hearing about anything dogs, I just gave the fuck up because I wasn’t going to get anywhere on a freshly-made Powerpoint if I didn’t have the fucking outline I asked for ready before me. I think my true tipping point though was when they began to send dog pictures to the entire group bc clearly, we’re more interesting in dogs than in the actual presentation that we need done by Monday.

Jesus Fucking Christ

If it wasn’t for my awesome and chill Biology group, I would be readily bouncing up and down to declare group projects in college the worst I have ever worked on. Even my high school peers knew how to be productive and on-task. I get that you guys want to look at dog pictures. That’s fine, I’m fine with that. But the moment we have a presentation due and you are talking about your dogs like the dogs are more important than the speech at that very moment, I’m done. 

I don’t care about your dogs. They’re cute, great. They do tricks, great. That’s lovely. However, I have a grade I want to earn and we are IN CLASS RIGHT NOW LET ME REMIND YOU so shouldn’t we at least try to be productive????

All I can say now is...bless VRAINS episode 26. Without that episode, I would have been bored as hell and without anything to do. 

[dbssh]

🖊!

im going to use this as a convinient excuse to talk about the better-than-overwatch superheroes ive been buzzing about for the past five hours. im on mobile and cant do readmores so. buckle the fuck up!

so the general idea of it is that theres this group called the Citizens of Mankind Protection Agency (CMPA) that starts out as this disaster relief agency mostly focusing on upholding peace and prosperity through a group of allied human nations through the solar system(called the Earthling Pact/Unified Earthling Pact)

BUT after about 100 years of corruption and war (with different groups of robotic and alien lifeforms) the CMPA has basically lost any trust or respect from the general public, essentially being a privatized corporate police/military force.

after a PR disaster or two in which the CMPA fails to do its job of, yknow, protecting people, it decides it needs a new 'public face'

this leads to the development of the Compatriot program! its a campy, showy, gimmicky styled team of superhero types thats meant to operate as underdog style heroes that the public will root for and enjoy and trust

this team is led by the bushy-tailed rookie, Hilda Beckham (codenamed: Operative). Though inexperienced, Operative was chosen for her quick mind and general positive, friendly air. She's scrappy and good at using her environment to solve problems, and is a confident leader. Young as she is, she genuinely believes she can use Compatriot to make the world a better place and to heal the corruption in CMPA. (her playstyle would probably be a dps player similar to s76 and tracer, a quick-moving midtoclose range damage dealer. plain, no real superpowers, though she has more advanced melee things than others(sprint, dodging, tuck and roll kinda things. maybe a stun blast)

she goes on a recruitment mission, seeking out retired/defected/former CMPA members as well as new and gifted young people to make up her team.

her first catch is a young person named Angelo Brady, codenamed Bubble! their power is basically what it says on the tin, they can create bubble-like surfaces to use as protective sheilds(for themselves teammates, and fixed points/objects) as well as platforms to jump around on, giving them higher manuverability and a bit of technique. They'd probably be a more defense-oriented character, with a long range primary(maybe a zarya sort of splash damage), as well as a short-range secondary, and more focus on moving around and sheilding than melee fighting. their ultimate would maybe be something kind of hammond-ey? a spread of bubble bombs thrown around a certain point? or maybe sticky traps? who knows. not me

their design would be very pop-ey, bold colours and shapes taking inspiration from murals, street art, and pop art. very young, maybe around 16?

second she grabs up Arthur Braveheart, codenamed as King Arthur. A former CMPA member that was discharged during the wartime, citing that his "code of honor" interfered with his ability to follow orders. he's kind of grouchy and very jaded but follows a strict code of morals for how he fights and conducts himself.

hes a knight-themed tank hero that has a very sword-and-sheild playstyle, with high health and additional armor. He fights melee, with no long range capabilities. His primary weapon is a bigass sword that like can light on fire and stuff. Has some sheilding capability, but only for himself. Secondary attack is a sheild bash. His ultimate gives him a horse that moves at 2.5x his normal speed and doubles his weapon damage, as well as knocking you prone if he "charges" you with the horse (ult. lasts 10-15 seconds. the horses name is Excalibur.)

third she goes after Revenant, a nameless and elusive former CMPA member that really only exists in rumors, for the most part, serving as a sort of vigilante type in the desert areas of america and mexico. Revenant was a victim of brutal genetic experiments by CMPA, in attempts to make the perfect soldier. she can go into a werewolf-style rage transformation thingy, and was believed to have been killed in battle, shot with an enourmous energy blast clean through her stomach, only to get back up and keep fighting. she's virtually unkillable.

shes heavily melee-focused, a lot of physical attack abilities combined with shotguns(primary weapon). one of her secondary abilities is called "undying", which allows her to regain up health as she deals damage for 10-15 seconds. her ultimate is a winston-style damage dealer where she increases 1.5x in speed and deals 2.5x damage for 15 seconds, as well as instantly being brought up to 60% health if she was below.

she turns down Operative's offer, saying she'd rather die than do anything for the CMPA.

she travels with a young woman known as Vaquero,a mexican girl with a cowboy aesthetic and a knack for sharpshooting. She's a windowmaker sniper-type, using a lasso-thingy to hook her to points and pull her towards them. She has a smoke bomb+shadow-sneak ability that essentially turns her invisible and gives a 1.5x speed boost for twenty seconds, and can "take cover", drinking a thingy that regains up to 50 health. her ultimate allows her to jump to the nearest visible group of two or more enemies and high-noon them, slowing time aim-focusing up to three headshots.

Vaquero & Revenant have a really cute mother-daughter style relationship even though Rev is a very stoic, tall dark & brooding type. her only weakness and care in the world is Vaquero, and she'd follow her to the ends of the earth.

V & R are classified as rogue, unalined characters, but their primary goal is to take down CMPA and the compatriot program (Revenant would also like violent revenge on the doctor who tortured her)

SPEAKING OF! the good doctor is a woman named Ilyana Glasse, a morally ambigious medical doctor interested in cybernetic & genetic enhancment engineering. shes very much just Moira two bc im in love w moira.... but a bit more sadistic and just fucking weird to be around.

Glasse actually seeks out Operative, as a high-ranking scientist in CMPA she very much wants to be involved in this team of experimental, incredibly talented soldiers.

THERE ARE PROBABLY A LOT MORE I JUST HAVENT THOUGHT ABOUT YET. I WANNA GET IN SOME ROBOTS AND SOME MARTIANS AND SOME SPACE-DWELLING HUMANS TOO BUT AHHH THATS A LOT OF STUFF

NEways i just. love superheroes and i love the *concept* of ovw so much the execution just. suuuucks.