a bumpy end

Well, the elusive moment has almost arrived - this is the last week of nie stuff for this sem, and i've made my last journey to the far west (of if you prefer, M'sia) for the year. All that's left to do is a handful of web thingies, and that's it. And not a moment too soon, that's for sure, although admittedly, after months on end of seeing nie people day after day, it seems weird to not have to see them (at least not in a school context) for at least a good month.

Anyways, not everything for this sem has ended on a good note (though come to think of it considering my many gripes about what has happened, i suppose it's already a surprise that it hasn't ended off even worse). There's this one particular not-too-useful class that i've not exactly been very enthusiastic about since day one. My sentiments are shared by just about everyone else in the class. We have bones to pick not just with the class itself, but also, and perhaps more critically so with the tutor as well. And as a result of this veritable reservoir of antagonism, to put it mildly things have not been pretty, with enough drama to rival the most over-the-top of Korean serials. Admittedly, i've been contributing to this atmosphere, though after one especially significant blow-up i realized that well, i basically needed to be more Christ-like.

So after the exercise of significant self-control over the course of the next couple of weeks, it came to the last lesson, whereby we were supposed to receive feedback on one of the assessment components that we had done a couple of weeks before. All that while i think we all were thinking that we should have been the ones giving much-needed feedback to the tutor, and not the other way around. Although come to think of it, history would lead me to assume that even if we were to do that, nothing would change on the tutor's part anyways.

But well back to the point, before the feedback exercise we were supposed to fill up a feedback form "on the course, not on the tutor", as was made explicitly clear to us countless times. So well, in my desire to do my part to make sure that future generations would not have to go through the same @#$% class (although again from history, chances are that little, if anything, would have changed - that's nie's ear-to-the-ground for you), i was quite brutally honest with my views on the class, while trying to not offend anyone in the process.

Unfortunately, in the process of making my views clear on paper, it reminded me of all the suppressed annoyance i'd had towards the class over all those weeks. So by the time the feedback process came, i apparently was quite riled up, and so i became somewhat dismissive and couldn't-care-less towards the tutor. Or at least that was what many of the others pointed out to me afters (though they did that generally in a more in a congratulatory tone than a reflective and sober one - such is the terok state of this class that we've had to tahan over the weeks). But, as i said, that came after the feedback session - during which i actually was already trying to withhold myself from being overly blunt. So it was on that disgruntled note that i ended that bit of nie. Hmm - am not too pleased with that, but i also figure that if not enough is done to alert this tutor to the harsh realities of the class, it'll just be horrid for future generations. And i shall spin it in that way in my mind so as to not beat myself up over it any further...