Watch the Clock - Opinion Piece
By Jason Joseph

It is difficult being a university student, but we still make the decision to do the whole university and degree thing. But it still it takes a lot out of a person mentally, emotionally and physically. Besides the many kinds of psychological and physical strains a university student has to deal with, there is the issue of time.

Some say time is just a human construct and some say that time is subjective. Well, at university, you are subject to many deadlines that have been assigned to you by everyone else around you. It is not just your own time you have to use or abuse, and try to maximise in any possible way, but you are also dealing with other students’ and lecturers’ time.

There are group meetings, rehearsals, appointments and lectures, and everyone deems their time most important. Group members do not appreciate tardiness and ‘wasting of their time’ waiting for you, and lecturers seldom tolerate you arriving late for their lectures. Sometimes it can get to feel that you time is never really your own.

But what if you do make the concerted effort to try and keep all commitments. The thing is, life still happens, sometimes life happens too fast and then your body or the universe forces you to take a timeout, even if you are on a tight schedule. The point is: Sometimes you will be late.

It is true that never late is better, but if one makes an effort to arrive (whether late or not) should at least be an admirable quality. Especially if your destination is on a steep hill and quite a bit removed from other campus hubs and venues.

Print lectures are at 09:35 am on a Monday morning, next door to the Africa Media Matrix which is quite a distance away from the rest of campus really and one of the furthest lectures away from town. For some people it may not even be their first lecture or they may be coming from within town to attend this lecture.

One Monday morning a student arrived at the print lecture a bit late, but she arrived. The student took a seat at the first available seat right in the back row so as not to disturb the rest of the class. And when the lecturer, Simon Pamphilon, looked at her questioningly she apologised very politely for her tardiness.

What happened next was very harsh and uncalled for. Simon told her that if a student is more than ten minutes late for a lecture that that student ought not bother to come to the lecture at all. To be fair, he also added that if a lecturer is ten minutes late then the students may consider the lecture cancelled.

There was a brief exchange of words that seemed to aggravate both the parties. The student thus promptly stood up from her seat and left the lecture venue with the words: “Fine, then I’ll leave,” ringing in the ears of the students left in the lecture.

I feel that Simon’s reaction and behaviour towards her in calling her out like that in front of the whole class without knowing what the circumstances surrounding her tardiness was unjust and uncalled for. Simon should have firstly appreciated the fact that she made an effort to make it to his lecture, albeit a little late. Furthermore, she paid to attend lectures at Rhodes University; she is entitled to attend these lectures to the best of her ability. And lastly, she is a person who experiences life too, what if she was going through something just before she arrived at the lecture and was then had to deal with Simon’s hostility because she arrived a few minutes late.

Sometimes a little appreciation of the efforts made and a little consideration for the feelings and stressors that students experience everyday goes a long way towards helping students deal with the mission of getting their degree – in three or four years flat – because time is a ticking on by, and everyone is watching the clock.