Spring Semester 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Spring Semester 2008
Ah, the spring semester of 2008. It's the school terms again, and look at how happy and jolly everybody looks. But seriously, that sentence probably only applied for the minority of the people. As for the rest, like the infamous person on my contact list who loves to brandish her emotions at the back of her MSN nickname, it might be the beginning of yet another three months of Hell for some. School is not a theme park, it is not a place where you are supposed to have fun. Fun really is in the bonus package, it's like the working your head off as a janitor all day long, only to find a hidden stash of a million dollars in the garbage. You are not going to apply for a job like that, thinking that such a miracle is going to happen on a daily basis. School is not supposed to be fun, but sometimes it just turns out that way. Most of us are probably used to getting banged around by the system, while some others - despite having been in the system for the most part of their lives - just can't get the idea into their heads.
Ah, the spring semester of 2008. It's the school terms again, and look at how happy and jolly everybody looks. But seriously, that sentence probably only applied for the minority of the people. As for the rest, like the infamous person on my contact list who loves to brandish her emotions at the back of her MSN nickname, it might be the beginning of yet another three months of Hell for some. School is not a theme park, it is not a place where you are supposed to have fun. Fun really is in the bonus package, it's like the working your head off as a janitor all day long, only to find a hidden stash of a million dollars in the garbage. You are not going to apply for a job like that, thinking that such a miracle is going to happen on a daily basis. School is not supposed to be fun, but sometimes it just turns out that way. Most of us are probably used to getting banged around by the system, while some others - despite having been in the system for the most part of their lives - just can't get the idea into their heads.
First day of school, the day when we are supposed to start afresh. I went to school in my fisherman's pants, something the other three guys who went to Krabi did, but not Joel. Bunch of us started comparing damages on our body the moment we saw each other, while everybody else just looked at us as if we were some foreign worker invading the school from the nearest MRT construction site. Still, it was pretty fun to walk around the school in those long baggy pants, and the classes went on as usual without anything more than murmurs and stares. A big thank you to Hooey who was so enthusiastic in peeling off the skin on my back, which is the reason why they are mostly gone right now. Though I have a feeling that skinning me alive has been the harbored wish for a lot of people in school, actually doing it must have been their greatest wish for 2008. OK, my friends aren't that nasty. They are nice people, really.
At the start of every semester, we go through various rituals before anything really happens. Nobody is going to start off the term with the mood to study straight away. It's called the holiday hangover, and everybody needs a holiday from the holiday. I need a holiday for the holiday myself, since my back is still very much in the process of peeling, and the idea of getting myself down and dirty with the books has yet to sink in just yet. In the mean time, other rituals take precedence over everything else: Things like whether or not to buy the textbooks or get the photocopied versions, whether or not to get new files and folders and other necessary stationery. Then there is that all-important question in our minds, the question that we desperately need to find out on the first day, because it pretty much dictates the kind of life we are going to get for the next couple of months.
Lecturers, lectures are so important when it comes to the element of fun in our already dreadful life. They can make or break things, cause your learning experience to be a walk in the park or a crawl through pins and needles in Hell. They can make your homework assignments a piece of cake or a serving of durian soup. Either way, that is how powerful the lecturers are, but the worst part is probably how we don't have the ability to choose who we want our lecturers to be. The school decides that for us most of the time, which was why the lecturer's evaluation form at the end of the last semester was my attempt to get rid of Rosemary once and for all, so that she will never appear in the same lecture hall as me ever again. But I guess, like a bad song on the radio, some things are just meant to stay longer than the rest.
The first thing I heard when I was just about to approach the classroom was somebody telling somebody else that it was Rosemary taking that class. My face turned black, and then white, and then into a dark shade of blue and green at the very same time. It was a piece of information that was hard to stomach, although I have already predicted our meeting once again after the horrors of last semester. The problem is that I never actually expected us to meet again so soon, and she's just like a dog's tail that always seems to be chasing you when you are running around in circles on the lawn as a dog. I had the urge to drop the module right there and then, and it was either that or a bloodbath in the lecture hall that very morning. I was determined to murder her, really stuff a smoke grenade down her throat this time around. But then a thought came into my mind, a rather evil and malicious thought indeed.
I looked around at the friends from my school, the majority of them who has yet to experience Rosemary for themselves. This was the time for them to experience her for the very first time, and it'd be interesting to hear what they have to say about that lazy Hawaiian pig. Killing her would take that fun out of the equation, which would also mean less fun for me at school. Having been through her module last semester, I know what kind of a person I am going to face this coming semester, and I am fully prepared and ready to go. As for the rest, it'd be interesting to observe how the impression of Rosemary in their minds are going to slowly deteriorate over time, as if it hasn't already hit the rock bottom already. This time, it is not going to be a small class of unhappy Asians whom you disliked so much for our nature to cheat. It is going to be a bigger class this time, and let's see how you are going to deal with it when a whole horde of angry students charge behind you with butcher knives this time.
Other than Rosemary, all the other lecturers have been pretty much good news all around. Jan McNeil, another communications lecturer, looks somewhat like a character out of a 80s soap opera. It is probably the way she tied her hair, or the amount of denim found on her body, or maybe it was just because of the thick southern accent she has. Everything about her was so new to me, which made her so interesting to listen to in class, though a little soft on the ears. She's soft-spoken for the most part, and a little slow but definitely patient towards the students. My only worry for her would be the possibility of students trying to walk all over her, in which case would be a terrible thing to witness. Not everybody has the ability to control a class like Baban Hasnat did in the first semester, that guy wasn't a character you'd want to fool around with. An as for Jan, she looks really really nice and approachable, and I do hope that our relationship together between the teacher and the student is going to be a pleasant one. Having one Rosemary to hate is really enough.
There is Mr. Curtis Thomson, the UGC lecturer. This guy is brilliant, and probably the happiest lecturer I have ever seen. He came into the class with a million watt smile and an incredible shine in his head because of the baldness. He is yet another soft-spoken lecturer, but has the ability to gravitate our attention towards what he has to say. I don't remember having the ability to finish a single video shown on ancient history in class last semester, but I did manage to finish the whole hour of Aztec education shown today, in which he was glad to throw us a pop quiz soon after. Speaking of Curtis, you have to talk about his awesome grading scheme for MCQs. The problem with MCQs, according to him, is that the answer is very definite. If you circle the wrong answer, you are probably going to get the marks allocated to the question, deducted. To eliminate that possibility, this guy managed to come up with this brilliant scheme that involves circling the wrong answers instead of the right one in an MCQ question. In that case, you can still get part of the marks even though you don't know what the right answer is - an idea which I think, is mind blowing.
Then there is, sigh, Dr. Raja. Dr. Raja studied psychology and has a masters degree in it, but at the same time she teaches meditation. This course is a statistical course, and it already sounds boring from the word 'statistics' itself, and she has been teaching that for the past five years, imagine that. Today was the first lesson with her, and it was the longest three hours of my life. As boring as the lesson was, I can't imagine those poor souls having to wake up at ungodly hours on Saturday mornings just to attend this three hour class at nine. Seriously, everybody in the lecture hall today was calling out for the sweet release of death, but Dr. Raja just went on and on about ratios, intervals, nominals and a whole bunch of other things which we could have very well found out about in the textbook. You got to give it to her though, not a lot of people can have the same kind of passion for a subject as boring as statistics. You could see the raging fire in her eyes when she tried to explain the sigma notation to us, something which I failed to see in the eyes of my own maths teacher when we were taught back in high school.
Anyway, so that was the rundown of my impression of the teachers in school right now. They are subjected to change, depending on the kind of grades they intend to give me throughout the semester. But for now, the semester has started out pretty well, save for the stubborn existence of Rosemary. I do hope that this semester is going to garner me a round of royal flush, or at least watch up with what I obtained in the first semester. It seems feasible this time around without much effort, and that is definitely a welcoming thought on my part. Looking forward to working with Raja, Curtus and Jan. And as for Rosemary, go fuck yourself.
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