2 is not enough

Walking into my 9 o’clock lecture this morning I felt something was off. The room was dark with just one other waiting student. Admittedly, in the first lesson we were only 10 students in the first lecture, and all of them, except me, where law students, and we all know we can’t trust that lot.

Eventually, the lecturer walks in. He’s a good lecturer and the lecturer, from the introduction the credit promised to be an interesting one.

I forgot to mention that the credit has two lecturers, but one of them (as much as I can tell from the 1.0833 (not an invented number) lectures we’ve had), is always late. Either way, the first lecturer walks in and sits down behind his desk waiting until ten past just in case the students were late because of the impossible parking situation on campus.

Very sweet of him and all. Like I said, a very nice lecturer with an interesting subject.

Ten minutes pass, he looks at us, says “so, I think the others dropped the credit”. He then stands up, and as he unplugs his laptop continues, “I’ll ask administration if the credit will continue with only two students and inform you by email.” And then he walks out of the class room leaving us sitting there staring at the doorway.

So wait, are this other student I never met and I not worth teaching?

I don’t know about you, but as far as I know University only has a rule stating a maximum number of students in a class. Do not quote me on this, I could easily be wrong.

But I find it highly unfair that if, in this case, two students are interested enough to come to the lecture, interested to act polite as the lecturer walks in and smile at all his jokes, if I’ve read the course description, knew it was his lecture and still chose it, don’t I have the right to be lectured? I mean it is his job after all, isn’t it?

It’s like a priest walking into a church for mass and finding only two people and saying “there’s not enough people, try join the church down the street.”

…

Reading that, I find I need to correct myself, because it’s worse than that, as in Malta, most of you know, each locality has a great number of churches or chapels, so finding a mass to listen to is not a great feat. If this credit falls trough, the hassle and beaurocracy this other student and myself will have to go through to find another credit is impossible to describe. All of you who have survived at least one year on campus know what I’m talking about. To all the freshers reading this: You’ll see.

*****

On a totally unrelated subject: I almost laughed out loud when at the end of my first ‘Basic Music Technology’ lecture notes, the further reading suggested was a link to a Wikipedia article. Like I said in an earlier blog around exam time last year, why buy books or go to lecturer? Stay home and read the internet. It’s where the lecturers are learning from anyway.