I'm not Lisa

Albert Speer

Both as a student and now as a teacher, I’ve seen many group projects assigned. But I’d never heard of taking tests together until just recently. My friend Cali has to take tests with a partner. She’s a diligent student; others in her class aren’t so diligent. It’s not fair to couple her grade with someone who hasn’t done the work she has done.

But my daddy always told me that life isn’t fair.

When I was assigned a group project, I usually figured much of the work would fall on me. Whenever I had a project to do, whether alone or in a group, I always intended to outshine anyone else’s project, no matter how hard I had to work. My friends in our major always tried to work together. Together we outshone any competition. We could trust each other to jointly carry the load.

In one class, we had to reenact the Nuremberg Trials that convicted top Nazis after World War II. Knowing well that no other combination could compete with Eric, George, Kelly and Roxie on the same team, he split us.

Kelly and I were assigned to defend Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and later munitions minister. Prof named me Chief Defense Counsel. Kelly was Chief of Staff. Three other girls were assigned to our team. One played the defendant and the other two were to be co-counsels. One was named Lisa. The third girl was her best friend.

Fortunately for us, George and Eric were assigned to separate teams on a different case.

I was familiar with Speer’s actions during the war. The evidence of war crimes was so massive and indisputable that we seemed to have no choice but to admit these things had happened. I knew that our only hope of avoiding the death sentence was to pin the blame for the concentration camps and slave labor on Speer’s underling, Fritz Sauckel, the head of Nazi Germany’s “Labor Deployment Program”; and on the heads of German industry, such as major armaments manufacturer Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. I carefully explained this strategy to my team. They all said they understood.

I pored over every book I could find on the topic, including Speer’s memoirs, and I carefully examined all Speer’s and Sauckel’s trial transcripts and supporting documents.

As I was required to do, I assigned various aspects of the case to my team members. Lisa and friend were assigned to research conditions at the Krupp factory. I had already read William Manchester’s The Arms of Krupp and knew how appalling those conditions were. I told Lisa and friend to research Krupp and even gave her my annotated book.

Our night class met once a week. Two weeks later, Lisa returned with a paper I would have been ashamed of. It was full of typos, grammatical and syntax errors. But, worst of all, it was not at all what I wanted. She said conditions at Krupp were wonderful. They even had maid service. Yeah, right. I asked if she had even opened my book. She admitted that she had not done so. I asked if she had understood our strategy. She told me accurately what it was. “Then why did you write this?” She had no answer for that. I told her to rewrite it using proper English. She was not pleased, but I didn’t care.

The night of our presentation, Kelly, “Albert” and I were sitting in a lounge area outside our classroom doing last-minute preparation when Lisa and friend appeared. “We’re not going to participate tonight,” Friend said. Lisa nodded.

The three of us were livid, but had no choice but to go on with the show.

We were well enough prepared that the opposition could not answer some of our points. They hadn’t heard of some of the information we had.

Speer went to jail for 30 years, 20 more than his actual sentence, but I felt we’d pulled out a great victory.

Eighty percent of our grade came from this presentation and I was not about to let Lisa and her friend piggyback on our success. I told the prof the sad story and let him decide.

The rest of our team aced the class. I don’t know what the prof gave them, but at least we had received what we had earned.

After that, I always tried to pick my own team. The life lesson here: Work with those you can trust.