Terrible Partners

[olivia34]

I once had a partner for dynamic planet that, im not joking, literally did not even know what the phrase tectonic plates meant. Its not even like I wasn't helping her, i made several quizlets, documents, and slideshows for her to study on. Idek what even.

[Schrodingerscat]

To provide the counter-perspective of how "warm-body" partners can prove useful in a pinch: after my junior year circuit lab partner graduated, I got an underclassman assigned as a partner. I offered to try to teach him a crash course in basic circuit analysis, but he refused. I was pretty good solo though, at least for the area, so not too much problem to me. At state, however, we were required to build a circuit with some very fiddly/unreliable equipment. After I designed the circuit, he was able to fiddle with the wires better better than me, giving me time to run the calculations. Thus I consider him to have contributed to my medal in the end.

[antigem]

For the bottle rocket event in middle school,my usual partner couldn't do science Olympiad that year. My partner didn't show up at all to any of the meetings, but we couldn't kick him out because we were short on people. He showed up 5 min late to launch the rocket and I was pigeon. He did help pump the bicycle pump, because I can't with my little stick arms, so that was helpful.

[Fanglin]

Back in middle school, I had a good friend of mine do bottle rockets with me. I had already done bottle rockets for a year, and had attended nationals with my rocket. Given this, I had pretty high expectations, and our team had a pretty good idea of what worked and what didn't work for this event. Also, I will mention that this partner was one of like 6 teammates in the event, and didn't always compete as my partner. As some of you remember, we were given the task of protecting an egg during the rocket launch and landing. I had my methods, which I knew worked, but we were did some experimenting too. This friend of mine decided it would be a great idea (and it was at first) to mold a plastic foam thing into the shape of an egg by melting the plastic. This made it perfectly fit within the lower part of the nose cone, all snug and secure. The issue is, that this protection device, once melted and molded, it was fairly ridged, and didn't guarantee the survival of the egg. It worked on and off, and we decided it wasn't reliable enough, but this kid decided to continue with it, so we let him do so. I think sometime during January before regionals, he had a launch, were the weight must have shifted in flight. The rocket barreled upward, and nosedived to the ground. Even worse, it was directly into the asphalt path, decimating the rocket. The best part however, was how the egg exploded into the nose cone, making a massive mess, and ultimately deciding the fate of his design, and possibly a few positions at the tournament.
This parter is a great friend of mine, and we still joke about this today.

[Nerd_Bunny]

My first year I had a partner for A&P who showed up to the first meeting, signed up, and then was never seen again. We even talked at the meeting about getting together and studying- then he never responded to my emails. I ended up doing that event by myself but starting late because I was overwhelmed with all of the content that I needed to memorize on my own.

[EastStroudsburg13]

Here are some other old threads in the Scioly.org's Bad Partner Series™, for your browsing pleasure.

• Bad partners (Apr 2009)
• Frustrating team members? (Apr 2010)
• Filler Partners (Dec 2014)
• Bad Partners (Mar 2015)
• Unprepared Partners (July 2017)

Other tangentially related threads:

• Proudest Moments
• Science Olympiad Stories
• Scioly Achievement List
• What annoys you?

Rest assured, you are not alone.

[Almandine]

One of my partners for Food Science didn't study at all, and when my station burst into flames, he just sat in his chair despondently.

[sciencepeeps]

My partner last year for Anatomy just did not grasp the topics. When asked what the most common neurotransmitter in the body was, they responded “Sensory.” SENSORY! And this was right before State, so we had been going over the content for a while. I ended up doing everything on my own.

[Otkrlj]

I have a partner who I kid you not swears to God that he has a football scolarship, a 120,000 camera, and a collage degree in arcatecture (btw he is a 9th grader and no, he does not have any of the above). He says all these wacko things to do for towers and criticized every desighn i made but put no work in building his own and couldnt say what was wrong with mine.

[Pettywap]

In optics, I was doing the optics box and my partner and I did really bad and only hit two mirrors. Afterward, my partner said "At least we didn't get disqualified". The proctors laughed at his comment.