I Love to Hate My Lecturers

I’m not a slow learner; I just don’t like to pay attention to people in suits. I have this primary school childhood fear of teachers. Teachers being angry, teacher embarrassing students in front of other students, students ganging up to bully the scolded student during recess...

In short, I was hoping for distance learning after secondary school, preferably while I travel. But my parents will have none of that, as they’re the ones paying for my tertiary education. They’ve learned their lesson of letting their children run wild with my older brother, Arsenal, who came home from USA no richer than $100,000. In debt.

Since my personality is a lot like my older brother, I ended up never even stepping foot out of PJ after SPM for my degree. And it was straight to degree too, no diploma. I had wanted diploma first, then get a little bit of job experience, then go for degree.

But again, overruled. Denied. Zippo.

I kind of understood all that. Parents always wanted the very best for their kids, whether the kids wanted to or not. This is to ensure bragging rights in their old age, trying to impress other parents about ‘oh-my-son-is-a-lawyer’ or ‘hey-my-daughter-drives-a-Porsche’ or ‘why-don’t-your-daughter-meet-my-son-and-join-their-bank-account-so-they-can-send-more-money-to-us-after-they-get-married?’.

I hate high expectations. I’m a simple girl. I don’t want a super-job that gets me super-money. I can only drive one car at a time, sleep under one roof at night and eat only 3 meals a day. That’s the downside of big families who need big support in their old age. Big expectations.

That’s why I’m thankful to finally becoming a majoring student this year. I have 3 lecturers and a supervisor now, all encompassing the major subjects and the thesis project part01. Their experience with students on the threshold of last university days prior to the rat-race reality encourages me to give them more respect than I do to my parents.

My ED lecturer is whom I shall call Lec. Whoops. This is because something always have to go wrong before she teaches, either PC breakdown, projector image blurry or the buggy classroom door knob getting locked - with all of us still in it. Being resourceful, she actually gave us a pop-quiz while the security guards look for the keys.

My VR lecturer is whom I shall call Lec-Xercise. She always seemed to be out of breath before coming to class for some reason. I later realized that she had just become Head of the Multimedia department (her first time and she didn’t asked for it) and that she didn’t like that the VR classroom is too damned far away from her office.

My MP lecturer is whom I shall call Lec. Java. It’s not just because she’s teaching advanced Java but it’s from her constant unflagging energy. For God’s sake, the class is at 6pm-9pm and she’s ready to get us do PC-lab tests and large coding discussions while everyone else is halfway to Zzz-land.

Lec-Xercise could learn a thing or two from Lec. Java, if Lec-Xercise could keep up with her and if Lec. Java could stop talking long enough to hear her.

And last but not least... Dr. Visor. He’s my new supervisor for this semester. For some reason, he got shackled with me even though he’s from Networking department. Maybe there’s a system here I didn’t know about. My last Supervisor and her superior-in-terror, Super-supervisor, was from Software Engineering.

Anyway, seeing that the man is a phD. I was scared that he might have expectations (and you know I hate high expectations). He’s in Networking and I want to propose building a game software. Would he want it online? Can I find an online system in time? Would he even accept a game system? Would he prefer I do something more mundane, like a forum community? I support open-source but does he approve?

Naturally, I was stuttering by the time I got my teaspoon of courage outside the department offices. I kept asking the receptionist for Safian or Sifuan instead of Sufian. Unable to wait for him to open the glass door, I got in through as another student was coming out.

There were two other students in the reception room. Five minutes later, there were only two of us. Unable to stop pacing, I decided to look for his office myself and asked a passing lecturer for his office (again, I stutter; I just don’t know why).

She actually looked amused. Then she pointed to the student behind me.

Oh crap.

Dr. Visor was actually waiting for me, nicely sitting there for the last 5 minutes, watching me pace around like a hungry puppy. I freaking thought he was a student, really. He was wearing plain white shirt and jet-black pants, standard uniform for all students from the Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism Management.

If I hadn’t been so nervous, I would have noticed; no need for FHTM students to hang around inside the FIT department.

Both lecturers had a good laugh as I really wish I could sink into the floor at that moment (I just have to make do with covering my red face with my textbook). At least it wasn’t like my primary school teachers; this was good clean embarrassment.

Least to say, the rest of the meeting went okay. He approved of the game system, taught me how to write the first chapter and encourages me to contact him once a week. He didn’t ask for online systems or additional programming. I can achieve those goals.

However, this doesn’t mean I’ll thank him for that trick. My next new blog will be about distance learning.