Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

This incident happened to me when I was in Year 2 Semester 1 (3 semesters ago) when I first started taking level 2 core modules in Material Science & Engineering. There was laboratory work for a few of these modules and we were assigned our partners according to our matriculation number. This meant that we had to do all our experiments and reports together with our partners and I shall refer to mine as Jon.

Previously in Year 1, Jon and I were acquaintances and he had seemed like an easy-going person to me. After the first experiment, we had 2 weeks before our first report was due for submission and a viva was to be carried out. For those who may not know, a viva is an oral examination with our professors or lecturers on our laboratory report to make sure that we actually did the report (and experiment) ourselves and that we understood whatever that was done. Even though guidelines were given to us, we were both unsure of what was exactly required and how to go about doing things. Hence, we decided to meet up a few times to churn out the report together. The first viva went SO badly that all I can say now to emphasize the extent of its awfulness is that we might as well have not gone for it. Immediately after the torturous viva ended, he was very cold towards me and he ran off after muttering something about having to rush off for an appointment. We did not talk after that.

The next time I saw him was during our scheduled laboratory session the following week. We were both sitting around waiting for our demonstrator to start the experiment and avoiding any sort of contact when he suddenly came up to me and placed his handphone in front of me. He had typed a message that says “I hope I won’t have to do 80% of the work the next time round.” Imagine how astounded and dumbfounded I was. I simply sat there reading his message, not knowing how in the world to react to this baffling human form.

Let me list down the reasons as to why I was appalled:
1. We did everything together and there was no division of work. So I could not see where his “80%” came from.
2. Our report was horrible; we did not write it in proper format, we gave short answers to the discussion questions, and most importantly, the answers we gave were wrong. I felt that we did not do enough research on the topics and I did not see why he should put the blame on me when things went awry. Our report was very short and we only spent very little time on it. So how does one calculate 80% of that? It probably was not very much.

How was I supposed to react? I definitely did not agree with him, and I really wanted to share how I felt about this with him. But I found it hard to do so without offending him and it would most likely lead to an argument. I did not want to have a quarrel with a course mate (especially when our course had only around 40 people) as it would be very awkward in the future. So what was I suppose to do?