You know, I've been in Monash Malaysia for 3 years (plus another one in Australia) and one thing I've found out here is that when a lecturer here isn't very good or has a weird quirck (and most of them are either one or the other), the students are very vocal about it. And I'm one of them. It's not uncommon for me to sit around with a bunch of my fellow Monashians and 'taruh' our lecturers on how draggy they are or how they talk like they're speaking Martian to us or how incomprehensible their notes are and so on. And one day last week, during a lecture by one of the most boring lecturers in the world who takes a record-breaking 15 minutes to explain one slide of his notes that is all about stuff we already know anyway, me and my classmates were all joking about keeping each other awake and sending sms-es to each other IN the class (wasting our credit, I know) and basically just not paying attention. And at one point, the lecturer took it upon himself to tell us not to think of him as draggy or complain about the class, coz' I suppose he knows that a lot of his students from previous classes complained about him in subject surveys. And at the time, I just kinda rolled my eyes and thought "Well, if you didn't give us a reason to complain about you, we wouldn't!".
But then later on, my conscience began nagging at me, and I realized that I and the other students were doing exactly to the lecturers what I didn't like being done to myself....people complaining about me. And it's easy to think people can be so mean and unforgiving when other people complain about ME, but when the tables are turned, it's just so easy to complain about other people. I guess it only makes sense... it's so much easier for people to pick on the negatives of a person instead of the positive aspects, and I'm no exception. While the Monash admin people were giving the students in one subject surveys for them to write their opinions about that subject and the lecturer (who is one of those lecturers who speak Martian), I checked out the comments of one of my friends, and the whole section on 'bad' comments was completely full....but he couldn't even come up with one good comment about the lecturer. And I was like, WOW, surely he could think of SOMETHING good about the lecturer. Coz' I know that the lecturer is a nice guy and he IS very knowledgable on what he teaches...plus he asks the students to let him know if they don't understand. It's just that he's not too good at explaining stuff....and the bad thing about Monash students (at least the Malaysian ones!) is that no one says anything if they don't understand, coz' we've been 'trained' since primary school to just sit down, shut up and listen. But like I said, it's easier to complain about others behind their backs instead of thinking of how we can talk to them and help them improve. Of course, I'd feel a bit funny going up to my lecturer and giving him advice on how to improve, but at least I could start to change myself by not being so generous with my negative comments like I used to. So yes, I've learned a good lesson in "Do unto others what you want other to do unto you". :P
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