We can be identified as a special group in our university, at least I think so.
My course is BBA (logistic & transportation), this is my first but why I chose it is beyond me. In my university there are less than 20 Chinese students in the same semester take this course, most of them major in Finance or International Business. So we are relatively special here, at least we are the minority course takers. In fact our course study style is the contributor to this “special”.
First is the lecturer. It is like that our course is a “holy land” where most “killers” get together. The so-called “killer” is such people who are extremely strict usually, they are over careful to your assignment they wan to find out every single fault about any aspect of you. the top one is our course leader –Emy. Nearly every BBA student knows her, and her name is following the “killer”. She like ask questions in her class, everyone must pay full attention to her lecture, and students sit from the front, if not, she will let us “feel sorry”. Needless to say, she is a knowledgeable lady, she knows well about the course she teaching. But nobody feel relaxed in her class, we get unintelligible pressure from the moment Emy enter into the class. It is like that every student become the target, we know there will be a moment when we are shot and we will die, we are facing the moment but it is unpredicted. So we get double anxious. Our university is a government university, so there are various rules and in fact most of them are difficult to accept. I just take the “dress matter” as an example. In China, jeans can be almost regarded as the uniform in some middle school and they are very popular in university. Jeans are fashion, comfortable and can wear through four seasons. But here it is totally “no” by the rule. In the rule, we must wear formal dress in the working time that is when we have class or wander in the official area. If you are not wearing formal, you cannot enter into the library. Once I failed to wear formal in Emy class, she immediately pick me out of the class, oh, shit! What is worse, she leave us assignment every class, if you take her class, the whole one semester you will spend your time in the library to search the related books and surf the internet for information. The whole semester will become “grey” if you are a normal man.
The second person is Adam. This Malay lecturer you may recognize as a Chinese by mistake, he is whiter than most Malay people. And in fact his mother is a Chinese while his father is Malay, so I think he get benefit from his gene. Adam is such person, his special favorite is to give you a long time for the many-requirements assignment. During that long time, he want your entire group member go to visit him once weekly. We think that maybe he is too lonely. Ai, the odd lecturer drives us mad.
The third one is Mustakin. He is the only one lecturer who takes the PHD in our course. But I cannot accept such fact. We cannot understand his English needless his lecture. Every time we read his notes, we feel as if there are a great amount of words in the paper but there is no linkage totally, no logy and no meaning. But, in fact there is no connection between the notes and his exam. For him is “the longer the better”. In the exam, he give us 5 questions and ask you to write 4 pagers for each on the A4 paper. We first read his question line by line, and try our best to guess the meaning of the question, then answer them by our image. I was lucky last time. for his exam I totally write 18 A4 pages within 2.5 hours. This is a “masterpiece” for a normal. I do not know what I was talking for there is no time for me to think. But in fact we must be good in English and read something and know something, if not, how can we face his “ the longer the better” exam? His lecture is very special. Unlike other lecture, Mustakin does not like lecture we all agree. Every class occupies 1.5 hours. He try to spend to time, it is the real “try”. He presents us with some notes, read them, and then talk to himself for a while, then it will enter into the true important part. He present some videos and then some music, all the people including the lecturers are waiting for the elapse of time. There are sometimes we totally does not want to say anything about the study in the class, then he will order us to pick out some pages ant give us a question then let us write in the class. He himself will fall into the deep meditation. Half an hour later, he stops us and ask how many pages we write _ ‘the longer the better’, then the class is over, he does not take over the paper and pay no attention to what we write just how much we write. So this lecturer overweight “quantity” than “quality”.
We own such kind of lecturers, it reduce our interest to the knowledge, in fact I have no interest at all. So there is a very interesting phenomenon in our Chinese student group. We are very united; this can be proved when we sign the attendance. In fact each of us has the experience of skipping class, and every one like doing it. Some times when we meet somebody by chance in the class, we will say” do you have this have this class? but this is my time to see you.” once there is only Chinese student present in the class, then he/she will sign all the names for Chinese students. I do not know how the lecturers feel, in fact they have already have no methods to deal with us. But their lecture is too dull for us. We prefer relax other activities, so we refuse class. But every Chinese student has the obligation to sign the attendance for people, so we are united indeed.
As a conclusion, our university study is not interesting; we get pressure from various killers, so we must be united.
