AITA · Advice & Questions · Oct 16

AITA for refusing to share revision notes with a friend who missed our last four study sessions?

AITA

"Could you send me the notes from the last four weeks?" my friend Jo asked. "I finish late all week and need to catch up."

I said, "They're for the people who did the work."

Jo and I are in the same evening course. Four of us meet on Sundays to work through practice questions. Jo came to the first two sessions and sent a useful set of questions afterward. Then her shifts at her family's shop changed, and she missed the next four.

At those meetings, I wrote the summary notes. The other two people checked answers with me and helped explain questions I had got wrong. I send the finished pages to them afterward. We never discussed whether attendance was a condition for getting them.

Jo says she isn't asking me to tutor her or make anything new, just send the pages I already have. She also said her absence wasn't because she preferred a lie-in to studying.

I know that. But writing the notes takes another hour after everyone leaves, and her message arrived just as I was finishing them. I suddenly resented doing work she'd be able to collect without being there.

One of the others thinks we should send them because Jo contributed earlier. The other says I can choose who gets my own notebook. I haven't answered Jo's last message, which just says, "I thought we were helping each other." AITA for saying no?

Discussion

5 community replies

@JulesAfterDark

Jo contributed at the first two meetings and supplied questions, so 'the people who did the work' was harsher than the history supports. You can be tired of writing the summaries without recasting her changed shifts as no contribution at all.

@MorganSays

The others helped check the answers that became the finished pages. That makes the notebook physically yours, but the learning in it less solitary than your reply suggests. It seems fair to discuss sharing with the group instead of announcing a new attendance condition after four weeks.

@TheoInTransit

An hour of extra writing is still an hour, even if forwarding the result is quick. If the summaries are becoming too much, say that and ask whether someone else will take a turn. Jo's request may have exposed an arrangement you already disliked rather than created the whole burden.

@maren17

Would you still refuse if Jo offered to check practice answers or summarize the next topic around her shop shifts? That could show whether you want reciprocal effort or specifically want attendance. The two aren't always the same.

@northstar88

Reciprocity could help, but don't invent an assignment just to make Jo earn pages that weren't previously conditional. A future division of work is worth discussing with everyone. It shouldn't be used to disguise the fact that the terms changed when she asked.

AITA for refusing to share revision notes with a friend who missed our last four study sessions?

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