As mentioned in my previous entry, I was drafting an e-mail to escalate the incomprehensible-Audio-Technology-lecturer matter to the dean since Dr XXXX XXX, the Head Of Programme (or so I thought I had been e-mailing to - more on this in the next entry), kept skirting around the issue. A guy from Hardware Zone forum (on which I've posted this "complaint saga" as Jr calls it) messaged me saying that his past experiences with Dr XXXX XXX also had the guy giving non-committal answers all the time.

I took some time to draft my e-mail, and more time to wait for responses from my classmates. In the end, one took too long to reply and I sent it without his name. Another one asked me to exclude her name from the e-mail 'cause she felt like it was a lost cause. So, in this email, there's only one other name appended at the bottom. I'm not deterred though.

Here's the e-mail I sent in the end, after quite a bit of editing to sound less threatening (my classmate who agreed to put her name in the e-mail mentioned my previous edit sounded like I was threatening Dr XXXX XXX) and a bit more... Docile. Not so much though, 'cause I still wanted to put my points through. Haha. You might find some of the text familiar as I re-used some things that I've blogged about.

Dear Dr XXX,

We noticed that in the past two e-mails, our question and clarification on regarding whether a change of lecturers is still possible has been left unanswered.

After thinking about the matter for some time, we have decided that we will not settle for a substandard lecturer. We've thought a lot about it and realised that the amount of knowledge from Audio Technology that we learned by ourselves or from each other far outweighs the total amount of knowledge we gained from Dr XXXXX XXXXX, through no fault of ours.

Dr XXXXX does seem very passionate about teaching, and as mentioned before, he appears to be a very nice person, but his teaching in a university should mean he is qualified (both knowledge-wise and teaching skills-wise) to be one. We are all for giving people a second chance, but not at the expense of our GPA. We fear that his lack of teaching skills will be detrimental to our studies.

Please facilitate the change of lecturers for us (Zulkifly Bin Maidin, and XXXXX XXX XX XXXXX) for the upcoming Video Technology seminars, or please assist us on escalating the matter to the dean.

Thank you.

Regards,

Zulkifly

CC : XXXXX XXXXX

And here's his reply :

Dear Zul,

After receiving your feedback, I have already communicated to Dr XXXXX to change his style of teaching, which I hope will be useful in the next course that he is teaching. In regard to a change in lecturer, I can bring this matter up to the dean.

Rgs,

Dr XXX

Okay... Sounds a bit better, I suppose. Will this change anything much? I'm not sure. I'm sure that the Audio Tech lecturer could be a better lecturer, that's for sure, but within a span of one week? And a huge part of our problem with him was his really heavy accent and constant mispronunciation of words. How much can a person really change that, if at all? But this was my reply :

Dear Dr XXX,

Yes, please escalate this matter up to the dean.

Thank you.

Regards,

Zul

CC : XXXXX XXXXX

At this point, I was really losing hope (as some of my classmates already had), but I knew that I just had to try.

I'll post the further e-mail exchange in the next entry, along with clearing up an apparent Head Of Programme mix-up. Also in the next entry are some miscommunication and revelations of my mistakes in my previous e-mails that I had not realised at all.

In other news, I suddenly had a sudden surge of visitors from edu.sg and gov.sg domains! 17 pageviews from them in the past 2 days. Also a sudden surge on the search on Google for the nick "zuldevil" leading to this blog. Hmmmmm.