‘This is a truly epic clip,’ said Frank, turning his laptop round to show the screen. A cat was trying to crawl into a box that was much too small for it. Vera interrupted the hilarity. ‘Come on people. We really need to get some work done.’ Together with five other students in her year, she was upstairs in Forum working on a project. They were making almost no headway.Luckily she had some support. ‘Yes, we need to get a move on,’ agreed another group member. ‘The other groups have already got really complex models.’ Frank meanwhile was nonchalantly brushing a few blond locks off his face.‘But a model should be simple,’ he started. Vera wanted to jump in quickly but was too late. Yet again Frank was giving them one of his boastful sermons. The end was always the same: his high school years when, as a maths genius, he had passed every test without doing any revision. Vera looked imploringly at her team mates but they only stared back helplessly. As usual, it was up to her to provide some leadership.‘Okay,’ she said finally, clearing her throat. ‘I’ve already updated my part at home and that’s really improved the model. How did you guys get on?’ To Vera’s relief, a discussion got underway and progress was rapid. She smiled when the German guy reeled off a list of mistakes in Frank’s work. ‘He’s such a jerk,’ thought Vera. Frank was now looking sheepishly at his laptop screen. At about four thirty, when everyone was getting stale, they decided to call it a day. Vera promised to put everything into one document so they could all check it before Friday. ‘Now, we’re cooking with gas, bros,’ said Frank, as they left Forum. Vera rolled her eyes in disbelief.Frank’s remark popped into her head on Thursday evening as she was finishing the work. ‘I bet he’s propping up a bar somewhere,’ thought Vera, ‘while I’m polishing his work for him.’ Suddenly she had an idea. She deleted a graph in Frank’s part and pasted in a photo of Vecino, stretched out on the window sill, asleep. ‘Figure 3,’ she typed beneath it, ‘Frank doing his final check.’ Send. ‘Now we’ll see who’s cooking with gas, bro,’ thought Vera. When the group met up the next day, Vera wasn’t the only one who happened to be grinning. ‘And Frank,’ she purred, ‘did you spot any mistakes in the latest version?’ ‘No,’ he replied, leaning back in his chair. ‘I reckon it’s ready to print and submit. It looks great.’ The whole group burst out laughing.
Group work
The story so far: Vera is no longer the shy first-year who applied for a room in the house last year. She is now an active student and a born leader when she works with her course-mates.
