The project management test yesterday went OK, fortunately it was open book and since I didn't finish getting thru the material, it proved handy being able to double check answers to questions that were a bit tricky. Since starting my B.Tech degree last year, this is the first open book test that I've written. It almost felt like cheating, though I could see that if one was completely clueless, one wouldn't be able to find some of the answers in the reference material.
We had the invigilator from hell watching over us. Asshole wasted 2 minutes of our time, first with getting us to sign a register during the test and second when he was yelling at a student for using his cell-phone as a calculator. He continued his tirade by shouting that it clearly stated on the front page of the paper that cell-phones were not be used as calculators... I had a look at my paper's front page, and didn't see such a warning, but then again maybe that student was writing a different subject. I don't think that shouting at students goes down well with them, especially when the person doing the shouting is old and white [relic of the apartheid era] and the majority of students are "black". Apartheid gave whites licence to treat non-whites anyhow they wanted... correction, it forced them to treat non-whites as second class citizens. Invariably some of them liked it that way.
Today, I need to get cracking on my COCOMOII software engineering project... from now until Monday morning, I will try to eat, breathe and sleep COCOMOII. Err.. we'll see how that goes.
Over and out ;)
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6 comments:
huhu, you spelt calculators wrong...
i hate racism, i hate it. I'm not saying i hate that the guy was racist, i hate that there is even this idea of racism... we should just call someone that is rude to people of other races an asshole, not a racist. cos that person could just be an asshole and not a racist, but because we have this "racist" label, it makes some people far bigger assholes than they really are.
That I did! Will correct it now.
You raise a valid point, the guy might just have a terrible demeanour. Though it just ain't PC for a old white guy to be shouting or being rude to a black student. It can give the wrong impression of what is going on.
Like last night in class, the one black student complained to the lecturer that people are asking questions in Afrikaans. She said that she doesn't understand Afrikaans so they should ask the questions in English. How would the majority like it if she asked questions in Xhosa, she asked. The Afrikaans lecturer said that the questions were irrelevant questions... which maybe they were, but if one doesn't understand the words being spoken, one cannot help but get the feeling one is missing out on something. In this case, the Afrikaans lecturer in question communicates to us in English 99% of the time, and he is, generally speaking, good natured. He has a mischieveous streak in him, and when the next sutdent [who happened to be black] asked a question, he reminded her that she needed to ask it in English. Now, he might have only been poking fun, but the end result is that the black student that raised the initial objection might feel a bit embarrassed for raising a perfectly legitimate gripe.
Sorry, if I can just add to that. The lecturer isn't being "racist", but he is however making light of a student's complaint about Afrikaans, which could be perceived as being prejudicial to those that don't speak Afrikaans. And in this case, the student in question was black.
I agree with jon sa: It's so damn annoying the way people in this country throw the label "racist" around. If I don't get along with someone, it's because of their personality, not their skin colour. WTF? So if I don't get on with them, and they happen to be non-white, I'm a racist? But if they are white and I don't like them, then it's not a problem.
The student was not allowed to use his phone, the lecturer was having a bad day, he over-reacted and shouted at the student... that makes him a racist? If he had shouted at a white student? Then it's no problem. What if the lecturer was non-white, and he was shouting at a white student? Is he then also a racist? I'm bringing this up because:
People use racism as an excuse for everything in this country. And it's just funny how white people are so easily labelled racists, but when the roles are reversed, nobody accuses the non-white person of being racist.
I think it's really pathetic - if people would just look at things a bit more objectively, they would see that race isn't an issue.
This isn't a rant at you Akira ;) it's just a rant in general. I think I should do a post on this...
You guys are all right about the racist label being applied too readily. However, I never used the term racist in my original post, jon sa did... all I said was that the guy was a relic of the apartheid era, the implication being that he would have likely have been one of the privileged few that would have enjoyed the benefits of apartheid. My observation was more about commenting about how the situation might have appeared to some as opposed to what I thought was actually going on...
A lot of non-whites have a chip on their shoulder about maltreatment of their kind by the whites and therefore they might be over-sensitive about an old fart (who happens to be white) shouting at a student (who happens to be black). Whites in the New South Africa now are overly-sensitive to allegations of racism because the race card is used far too often and conveniently.
As it so happens, this particular invigilator is always in a foul mood and the likelihood is that this is his invigilator-don't-take-no-crap-from-nobody persona that he uses to deal with the crowds. Though he was very nice to me when I was in the process of handing in my paper… And he did bring a calculator to the white student sitting next to me when the student asked for one…
Oct, you're right, it's a serious thing to be labelled a racist, not something to be taken lightly.
What I was trying to say came out wrong.. probably because I used the wrong words!
Let me rephrase a bit. I think whites are sensitive when it comes to the possibility of being implicated as a racist whilst non-whites are sensitive to behaviour that can be construed as racist.
Things are a bit messed up in the New SA. Black is right and white is wrong. It's Apartheid in reverse, with racial quotas, etc... to boot. I dont think that's cool either.
I don't think Apartheid should be used as an excuse for some of our thought processes, but I do think that it can help explain them.
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