Many of us have been treated unfairly at one point in our lives or the other. Sometimes, it can be something minor that can easily be overlooked but at some other times, it's quite a big and painful experience. I have had a lot of unfair treatment over the years and I easily move on from them, mostly because I saw them coming and already prepared myself on how to deal with the disappointment. But there's one that was an exception, I never imagined such would happen.
This incident happened when I was in 300 level at the university. We took a course called "field work" which is a hands-on practical course for a 3rd year students in the faculty of Agriculture. In this course, 70% of your grade is based on your field activities (attendance, punctuality, ability to follow instructions and also your attitude to fieldwork) while the other 30% is obtained from a written exam which is also based on the activities you did in the field. So, in summary, you have to be very active in the field and try to take part in all activities to get a very good grade.
That's exactly what I did. I never missed a single day of fieldwork and was always punctual (the farm manager closes the attendance book once it's 10 minutes past the opening time). I was always one of the first people to jump into any activity and soon became one of the favourite students of the farm manager. He always assigns me and my friends to very important tasks because he knows we are reliable. During the exam, the questions were also very cheap because they were based on the activities we did during fieldwork, which I fully participated in. I could answer the questions with my eyes closed!
But then came the result and I was shocked to see that I got a C. There were very few C's on the result board and nobody expected that I would be one of them. My coursemates were shocked and some of them kept asking "After all you did?" The most painful part was that some people who barely took part in the fieldwork got better grades than me, one even got an A! I kept asking myself "How?", it didn't make any sense at all. I got to know of a serious corruption going on in my department from my predecessors and that was the only thing that made sense to me.
A professor was in charge of that course and he gave grades based on the farm manager's reports. After grading, the professor asks one of the young lecturers in my department to record the grades into the result sheets, and that's where the problem comes in. These young lecturers (they were 2) are seriously corrupt, they take money from students for better grades. Professors usually take note of the number of students that got each grade, so these young lecturers just "swap" grades.
It will be bad if the professors are doing a review of the result sheet and then they suddenly notice that the number of A's have increased. So, the best thing will be to swap the grades of the students who paid with someone else, so that if the number of A's is 10, it remains 10. Now, all these might be true or just some crazy conspiracy theory but it doesn't change the fact that what happened to me in that particular course was unfair and an injustice. I passed all the requirements but still got an average score, while I watched people who barely participated get better grades.
That was the only course I got a C in that semester, and that even made it worse considering I could have easily gotten an A (I was confident of getting an A). That incident affected me during my industrial training because I became nonchalant towards it. I mean, what's even the point? I may put my soul and spirit into it and still get a low grade while someone who didn't even show up at all will get an excellent grade (this actually happened!). Anyway, it took me time to heal from that experience because I never saw it coming, but in the end, I just had to move on.
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