Career Murder : A dangerous precedence

Selfish motivations

A bloodless murder has been committed, and I felt no guilt

It appeared that in the process of protecting my own interest, I have played a major role in committing a career murder. By exposing Malar and providing evidence to prove that she is an incompetent lecturer, she had lost her lecturer role in both BIS1 and BIS2. This will effectively kill her chances of getting a job at APMI Kaplan again, or maybe even worse, the whole of Singapore. I will term this as the Malar Incident.

So what exactly is my interest in this matter? To put it simply, I want to get what I had paid for. I bought and paid for a quality university education and I will not settle for anything less. I am working very hard to pay for my degree and I expect APMI Kaplan and Murdoch to deliver their product.

I admit that I had practically driven and orchestrated the whole chain of events to achieve my goal, for I perceived Malar as a threat to my future. By doing so, I have surely burnt a lot of bridges and got myself highly ranked in Murdoch and APMI Kaplan's trouble maker list.

Burning desires

The road to success is paved with the skulls of my victims

My motivation for getting a quality degree is driven by my desire to advance my career to higher levels. I have allocated and spent time, money and effort investing in my university education in order to achieve this. It will be my own fault should I neglect my own parts in my studies but it is a different story if APMI Kaplan or Murdoch fouls up.

In this case, if I had allowed Malar to get away with this, the percussions will be great indeed. Despite paying full attention in every lecture, I will score badly in the examination and ruin my results. Murdoch will not compensate me for this. APMI Kaplan will not admit their negligence and will let things slide. The biggest loser will therefore be me if I choose to maintain my silence.

If my results suffered as a direct result of Malar’s incompetency, it will be reflected in my results forever. I will suffer great losses in the future financially and in my career. I cannot imagine the loss of opportunities that would have occurred, If the Malar Incident cause a delay in my graduation, I will not be able to qualify for a higher pay bracket which I am waiting for. Will I be able to sue Malar for liquidated damage for loss of future income ?

After giving Malar a few chances to redeem herself, all Malar did was to manage to squander every bit of faith and patience that I have. I knew I had to do something to put a stop to her nonsense. Malar will be the biggest loser of all. I promised myself that. Malar should have considered herself lucky and thanks her lucky stars for I did not blow up and give her a good dressing down for her failures.

What you pay for is what you get

Hanging a goat's head and selling dog meat sucks

From my point of view, I will regard APMI Kaplan as an educational service provider, Murdoch BIS course as the product and Malar as the service delivery medium. My expectation is simple. APMI Kaplan works out the administrative stuff, Murdoch gives use quality material and Malar to add value to the subject.

Since I have paid for instructor-led lectures, I do expect something more than a walking acrobat reader. The lecturer should have a good grip of the subject, and able to answer my questions. Yes, I did encounter boring lecturers who could not impact their knowledge to me effectively due to teaching styles but all of them had the required knowledge to teach in the subject. With the exception of Malar, all the lecturers I had studied under so far knew what was needed to get me to understand the subject and pass my examinations. Unfortunately, Malar obviously failed to comprehend the subject, and did not sufficiently prepare for the lectures. There was no knowledge to impart and the corruption in her knowledge is so blindingly obvious.

The price that we pay

There is no right or wrong, it's a matter of perception.

However, this does come with a heavy price for everyone entangled in this mess. Removing a lecturer in the midst of a running course is a very drastic thing to do and should only be done when the class has no faith in the lecturer ability to perform the job. From trimester 1 and 2, I know very well that Murdoch had set a high standard for the BIS course and the sudden drop in standards really stands out like a sore thumb.Whether the results justified the means is really hard to tell at this point in time, but somebody have to do the dirty job and bring out the trash right?

The Aftermath

Blowing things up is easy, cleaning up is hard

After a month since trimester 3 commenced, it has been a hell of a ride for the Software Architecture module. On 9th June, good news was delivered in the afternoon when Carol announced in the latest BIS newsletter that Malar had been replaced by Dr Loo for the subject. The dark shroud that hanged over our cohort had been lifted and we were happy that APMI Kaplan and Murdoch had acted promptly and gave us the best outcome possible in the Malar Incident.

I believe the Malar Incident should have caused plenty of unhappiness between Murdoch and APMI Kaplan. It's quite unbelievable that a seemingly experienced lecturer could have caused so many problems, but it will be useless to point fingers now. On the positive side, APMI Kaplan will hopefully start scrutinize their new lecturers closely from now on to prevent the Malar Incident from reoccurring.

Chronicle of events

Testing something new may cause complications beyond your wildest dream

• May 11 : Software Architecture lesson 1. Malar failed to cover topic 1.

• May 13 : Software Architecture lesson 2. Malar failed to cover topic 1 and 2. Course content becomes available over LMS, and it was discovered that Malar had not taught according to course content.
• May 19 : Complaint lodged against Malar for failing to teach according to course content. Mr Danny promptly got Malar to cover topic 1 and 2 in lesson 3.
• May 20 : Software Architecture lesson 3. Malar covered topic 1 and 2.
• June 3 : Software Architecture lesson 4. Malar failed to cover topic 3 and deviated from course content again.
• June 5 : Complaint lodged against Malar for outright incompetency in the subject.
• June 6 : Exchanged emails with Mr Danny to prove our case.
• June 9 : Malar has been replaced by Dr Loo.
• June 10: Lesson 5 is canceled as Dr Loo needs to prepare material.
  
  
• June 12 : Malar was dropped from BIS2 as well.