It doesn't pay to take initiative; Halo/Devil Effect

As has been proven over many occasions.

Which is a bit sad, because it took me long enough to gather the courage to start doing so, particularly in stuff that people hate to take initiative in, like admitting to a fault or most negative stuff.

So far on two occasions i've been the one corresponding with profs due to errors in projects, apologising for the mistake and trying to put across as nicely as i can that we would like to rectify the error. It's not something that i particularly mind, and didn't really take much note of until the other day when one of my group members went, "Doesn't matter to me, after all we're not emailing her using my account."

I guess that kind of means that it actually does matter who sends the email.

That aside, i believe people have thought of me as irresponsible/stupid/stuff like that when i take on things that others refuse to do because... those stuff usually just turn out badly/result in negative consequences. Profs think i'm the one who caused the problem, etc. And that's not really a good thing, particularly if the devil effect comes in.

See, people aren't going to care what kind of sacrifice you made to your reputation, or the initiative you took. What they notice is simply:

Answer question wrongly = Stupid/Dumb/Not paying attention = Not good student = Fail

Admit to error = Made error in the first place = Careless/Irresponsible = Not good student = Fail

Okay that was pretty exaggerated.

And something that happens very often in online forums:

Type short forms/Have typos = Bad English = Stupid = Bad education/upbringing

Which is very real, because everytime you see a flame war, you'll see people who use short forms get blasted for their language, which really has nothing to do with the centre of the argument in the first place. Yes, even when the bad speller can formulate a better argument than one who uses proper grammar and stuff.

I digress.

Kinda just wanted to rant, because i was feeling crappy over being the one who actually did the work we were asked to do, but ended up being the one who appeared the stupidest.

I'll talk about the spotlight effect another time.