Primal Sneeze

Read Back to School #1 and #2 …

We were a group of six. From three different countries. Spoke three different languages – four if you count two distinct dialects of one. Varied in age from 20 to, well, to my age. Six different educational backgrounds: Maths, Agriculture, Economics, Physics, Civil Engineering and Robotics. Six different reasons for taking the course.

The initial social groupings were based in either language or gender. i.e. Who went for coffee with whom. Within a week, this had all changed and we became one big team. A six pack. We were all a bit surprised as each confessed to being poor team players.

We were taking 1st, 2nd and 3rd year modules. We were competing against the 2nd and 3rd years who obviously had an edge on us in terms of pure computer science. Even the 1st years had an advantage – Straight out of secondary school, a lot of scientific and mathematical theory was still fresh in their minds. But each of the six pack had an area of expertise and we would coach each other. Even the arts graduate, with no scientific or technological skills, helped those with poor English, and later proved invaluable, saving us hours of research when we were given a finance-based coding project.

The lecturers were as I expected. Some were excellent teachers and communicators, willing to go that extra mile, willing to stay back and answer questions. Others were droning twats who pretty much read from the same script they had prepared years ago. It was the same my first time around all those years back. Some things never change in academia.

What I didn’t expect was the attitude of some of the lab demonstrators. (Note I say some, not all). A more condescending bunch of jerkoffs I never came across. Most were Ph.D. candidates who just a few years previously would have been struggling with the material we were now. They would sit back against the wall chatting among themselves and ignoring requests for help. When they did get up off their arses it would be to tell someone the task was easy, just do this and punch a few keys for them. Who learns from that? Earwigging, I would hear thicko and the like peppered through their conversations.

Now before I go further let me say that in all honesty thicko did aptly describe quite a few of the students I met. Why they were attempting degrees in IT was beyond me. Numbers applying for such courses had fallen and the intake wasn’t of the standard of years back. That’s a separate post for another day. But it did gall me that these demonstrators were being paid for a job they were not doing. It was not their place to make judgements and to decide coaching students of poor ability was pointless and not to be bothered with.

I knew I would crack eventually. And I did. I was failing miserably to get some code working and asked one of them over. He grunted that I should have had that part done an hour ago. I would never survive in the real world by being so slow. Real world! That was a red rag to a bull.

Listen hear, sonny boy. I was working in the real world, as you call it, when you were still shitting yellow. Don’t you dare tell me about the real world – you’ve never been there. You never will in fact – no employer would hire an attitude like yours. I’ve fired people like you.

My fees are paying your wages for this lab session. You are working for me now. So sit down there and do what I’m paying you for.

There was an eerie silence in a room of 50. Not even the sound of a proverbial dropped pin. He sat down slowly. Glowing bright red. Which is a sight to behold when the one blushing is a dark skinned Indian.

From then on no-one had a problem getting help from him, or any other demonstrator, while I was in the room. It isn’t like me to freak out like that and I apologised immediately, but it really gets on my wick when someone is paid for a job they aren’t doing.

Now read #4.

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