We’re all under 23. Our group is competing this weekend on a sports team. One of the captains proposed we do one of those funny/controversial/topic-we’re-weirdly passionate-about presentations on the night after our first competition of the weekend (we all started at 5am and we finally had dinner at 6pm). She told us about a week and a half in advance, I said I would do one in support.
Anyway, we get to dinner and only three out of the seven group members came with a presentation done, like with slides. The other four, me included, asked for an extra 30 minutes to create our slides because for whatever reason we didn’t get them done, probably because we’re studying during the week. We all go to a competitive university and I’m personally taking 20 reading/writing heavy units (the max), the other three are taking more than 17 in STEM, and the last two days spent leading up to the competition were constant communications about what to bring, logistics, etc.
The person, our captain, was really upset by this. She said she planned this activity and we didn’t show up prepared. We said we had other things going on and we just needed 30 minutes – even 15 – to put slides together for our subjects. These presentations are fun and informal so it’s not like we needed citations at the end or anything professional, and with sites like Canva you can do pretty great things with limited time. One of the person who had their slides done said they would be happy to work on their homework while we finished our topics. Our coach even said before we mentioned we still needed to put slides together that she was too tired (and sick the whole day) to hear the presentations and suggested we do it another time, like on the way home after the competition. Our captain simply stated that that wouldn’t work, this activity was planned for right now, not later.
We go back to our hotel. I’m thinking, “I’ve been a bad friend, she’s had a rough day, she told me about this in advance, I should have made time before our competition to have it ready. I can still try and make something just to show her that I see she’s still upset because apparently she really cared about this.” I make 26 slides of some really interesting shit that took me <15.
We all ask our captain to just watch, even if she doesn’t want to participate anymore. She COMPLETELY IGNORES US and keeps working on her p-set. A little later, I told her, “you’re not seeing the effort we did put in, even if it was late, even if we may have had other stuff going on in our lives, and I think it’s because you’re stubborn and I don’t know about that.” She said, “yeah, I am stubborn and I don’t care“ and went off to bed acting pretty much the same way, even if it times during the presentation she was smiling while overhearing us.
AITA? This wasn’t her first time being visibly annoyed to the point it affected others today And I don’t know why I take it to heart.