putting the blame onto someone else

the monotonous invigilation period is here again. i had my first 2 hour session today... in a somewhat larger hall, but still only a fraction of the menacing ones i used to sit in during my uni times in melbourne... five minutes into the start of the exam, a guy came in looking for his seat... to avoid distracting other students, i walked briskly to him and helped him look for his seat but failed. in the end, we had to provide him with a green attendance slip to fill up, and whisked him on into his paper without any delay.















watching these kiddos = watching paint dry

i was watching him most of the time, since he was way in front, next to where i stood.... writing ever so slowly, even adding an underline for his paragraph "title" and using a different pen for that purpose. why oh why, do these people waste precious time doing this? 30 minutes remaining, and he was panicking. his pretty handwriting was unrecognizable. you can even make out those green nerve lines screaming out along his arm as he put more force, writing profusely into the white paper..

feeling guilty, i started collecting the answer papers from the further end away from him... allowing him just a few more minutes to squeeze out those last few words, or sentences maybe. yes, i know it is wrong but lets call it guilty concious, and self pity too... just as i approached him while he was still busy writing away, the primary invigilator came around and made him stop writing immediately. and all this guy did was started blaming me for not being able to look for his seat. why me? why blame the people around for what may have been your own fault? why not come in 10 minutes earlier, before the exam starts so that you can find your seat, and maybe figure out the girl who accidentally sat in your place instead? why blame those who are just trying to carry out their duty the best they could?...

a colleague of mine put up a new status on his facebook today..

"One of the RA among our reseach group will resign soon...Supervisor or so called" Superior", please look at this case seriously. If unable to guide student, please don't take any student. Else, more and more RA will resign."

yes, i know facebook is a way to reveal your thoughts, just like a blog, but being the third party to these, are we in the position to conclude who's to blame? i may or may not know who this RA is, but if my guess is correct, both the RA and supervisor recently had a newborn. (well, that probably gave away a big hint to who the people are, but this is only my guess)... how can we put the blame on one person, when both parties are responsible on working together towards success? i am not taking any sides, since i only know them as who they are, but through my personal experience, we cannot solely blame it on one side... i myself admit, that i am to blame when i resigned my PhD in melbourne... i knew i had a great supervisor, so good to me, i felt like punching myself for quitting on him, and crashing his hopes... some friends believed that my supervisor did not provide much for me when i started, and that i felt lost...but isn't that how starters are supposed to feel? spoon-feeding is a thing of the past during PhD, and supervisors are there, well, just to supervise when in doubt... in this case that we all may not know about, maybe just maybe, the stress of their newborn is taking their toll? who knows what is the story behind these qualms? why put such unthoughtful remarks, which may only enkindle unkind responses?

an ignited flame can only be put off by the two parties involved, and not to be provoked into a fire by a third party who is only an outsider, who is ignorant of the actual truth that lays behind...