Li-Mei - Student
Kacper - Student
Sara - Student
Setting
University common space over lunchtime, the space is crowded and many students like to eat their lunch here rather than the university canteen, which is quite expensive.
Storyline
A group of students are gathered together trying to get started on their grouptask. From the dialogue, it is clear the students trust each other and share their experiences as well as some of their frustrations with how their voices are heard by staff.
Li-Mei
Finishes chewing sandwich and begins to fold up the card packaging.Have either of you heard from Callum, if he’s coming in or not?
Kacper
Pauses eating his fruit tub.He’s not been online on Discord since yesterday, think the only thing he’s put in the groupchat was when he reacted to your message earlier.
Sara
Snapping the clips on her now-empty Tupperware closed.No, I’ve not heard from him either. I’d like to hope he’ll show, but I suspect he’s too mortified after what he said to you the other week. Still can’t believe he’s got away with that.
Li-Mei
Grimacing.Of course, if he makes it in at all… racist p£$%k
Li-Mei
Well, him aside, what were you going to say earlier Sara? About the how we could interpret the assignment instructions?
Li-Mei
Because I’m still confused about some parts, I wanted to hear what you were going to say about it.
Sara
About the assignment instructions?
Li-Mei
Yeah, you mentioned something like you’d had a similar issue before, at your work?
Sara
Oh yes, that.
Sara
I mean, it’s only slightly related, but essentially we were given a team project with some rather, hmmm, vague? Yes, vague outlines of what the bosses expected of us.
Sara
We were given a project that could’ve easily been interpreted 5 or more different ways, and the higher ups didn’t respond well when we asked for clarification.
Sara
It was almost like they thought the team was incompetent and wasting time because we had to ask questions instead of just getting on with it.
Kacper
Oh god, I hate when that happens, it’s like I wouldn’t bother asking if I didn’t think it was important right?
Sara
Nods in agreement.Of course, that’s what we were talking about as well when it happened.
Li-Mei
So, what did you do in the end? Did it at least turn out okay?
Sara
Not really, unfortunately. It turned out as we’d anticipated – higher ups didn’t like what we turned in, even though we had tried to ask them to prevent it, blame got pushed onto the team leader, team leader split the blame between all of us… things didn’t improve after that.
Sara
Actually, now I think about it, everyone from that debacle actually left the company separately within maybe half a year or a year after that.
Kacper
Oh shit. That really sucks. I’m sorry it turned out that way.
Li-Mei
Yeah, that sounds really awkward. Were you and the team alright afterwards?
Sara
Oh yes, we all managed to patch ourselves up and get out on decent terms with each other.
Sara
It was certainly an eye-opener about how certain people in authority respond to questions they don’t see any worth in.
Sara
Checks her phone for the time, then places it back on the table.Anyway, I think that’s a bit more dramatic than what we’ve got here.
Sara
Did you ask John or Claire any of our points from our last chat at the end of yesterday’s classes, Li-Mei?
Li-Mei
Uncomfortable smile.Oh, uhm, not really…
Li-Mei
I mean, I asked about some pointers for learning outcomes 3 and 4 from Claire, which was a little helpful, but I got a bit mentally tied up about all the things they didn’t mention in the class session so I got a bit stuck before I could figure out how to ask more.
Kacper
Oh yeah, about all the completely missing context for the history of the language in both the east and the west right?
Kacper
God that was so annoying but I didn’t wanna be the one to argue about it all over again, I had enough of that back in first year and all it got me was lecture about students “bEiNg dIsRuPtIvE”. Worse than high school.
Li-Mei
Laughs.Oh gosh yeah, I remember that. Dr Martins was so pissed off at you because you were right but he wasn’t allowed to actually say that because it went completely against what he wanted to be teaching.
Li-Mei
Oh that’s happened to me loads, like when the teacher gave me the cold shoulder for that rant about racism?
Laughs again.Good times.
Kacper
No, that was too funny.
Sara
Looking puzzled but amused.Did this happen a lot then? When teachers would get mad at you for making a point in classes?
Li-Mei
Oh yeah, I mean it would make more sense if we were the disruptive type of students who shouted out and that type of thing, but we were actually fairly good about it when it happened.
Kacper
Yeah, like we would be actually doing the classwork and assignments and whatever properly but then there’d be something that we thought was worth talking about - us and the rest of friendgroup, not just us two - so we’d bring it up -
Li-Mei
- and they’d get really weird about it right? Some of them just completely brushed us off but others got really mad… which is really weird looking back now.
Li-Mei
Like, why were they arguing with a bunch of students? We were clearly actually engaged in the learning if we were talking about that kind of stuff.
Kacper
Soft mocking laugh.And suddenly they wonder why half of us don’t come to class, or generally hate talking to staff at any stage.
Li-Mei
So yeah, that’s probably why I didn’t properly ask either of them our points yesterday.
Li-Mei
Sorry about that Sara, I know you wanted to hear what they’d say about our questions for outcome 5 as well.
Sara
Oh no no, don’t worry dear. I can only imagine how difficult it must be when it comes to this sort of thing – of course I don’t have the personal ties to the topics we’re learning about the same way you two do, but it must be hard, and I’ve been around these spaces for longer than you two.
Li-Mei
...thanks for that, seriously. It’s so annoying when we end up ranting about this stuff and older people jump on us for “disrespect” or whatever, when the whole point is that we want to be respectful but we can’t when there’s all this… wrong info going about.
Sara
Gentle laugh.Hey, are you calling me old?
Li-Mei
Smiling jokingly.You know what I mean!
Sara
Of course, only joking.
Kacper
Yeah, what she said, it gets really bad when we’re discussing stuff about Europe or whatever and I have to hold myself back from jumping in with all the other stuff that I know from lived experience because there’s never any space for it.
Kacper
Like, even when it’s done correctly, quote unquote, it’s still like we’re running through a checklist and there’s never time to actually interact with the learning to add in the extra bits that we could talk about.
Li-Mei
Mhm! It’s not like we can just up and ask them to change the pacing or content of the classes either because I bet we’ll just get the same response as we always have done.
Sara
Oh? What happened when you tried before? I’m very curious, surely it must’ve been heard somewhere if you complained?
Li-Mei
Grim chuckle.You’d hope that, but nope. We just various replies of “We value your feedback but please understand it’s hard to change an established curriculum.” Or “Your experiences are valid and we’re listening but they’re too unique to be discussed.”
Li-Mei
Load of bs if you ask me, younger me was so pissed off and just lost all the fire after that.
Kacper
Yep, that’s how it went down.
