Most of us has almost succumbed to the above phrase. Yes, i personally do agree that life is indeed unfair at times, in fact, most of the times! Something happened in office triggered this thought of mine.

Life of unfairness begins from the day we are born, and it follows through our school life and eventually into our working life. It’s pretty sad but we cant escape from it.

Let’s talk about school life:

I remembered vividly that i belonged to the batch of students who got hit by the term “new syllabus” every year since primary school. When we hit the O levels, we got new Physics and Chemistry syllabus; we got new inexperienced teachers who almost taught us the wrong things. And some classes just get wonderful teachers who taught them solid content stuffs.

When we finally hit A levels, we have new maths syllabus. And when the A levels finally came, the MOST feared paper - General Paper, suddenly require us to write two summaries. (We were not even aware of it when we are preparing for the paper, and most of the students ended up getting bad grades for it.)

Then came the oral examinations. Some students were just plain lucky. The invigilators that they had were not paying attention to what they are reading, and they ended up getting good passes. The poor us who unluckily got stricter invigilators ended up being scrutinized badly.

It is all happening in every school. Teachers value the top students and totally neglected the weaker ones. If the student is top in the class, he’s assumed that he will be the top for every single subject. If he failed by 1 or 2 marks, the teachers will review his test performances and try and help in whatever way they could. “How could my top student fail this subject? He has done well in everything?!!”

C’mon lah, if this happened to a student who so happen to be the bottom of the school, do you think the teachers will go all out to help him/her? Of course they most likely won’t. They think the student is too weak and deserve to fail. So you call this fair? The students are so helpless at times.

Look at the latest case in the papers. A principal blatantly told her sec 4 normal stream students to go straight to ITE. And not long ago, a sec 5 normal student scored 7 distinctions in her Os. If the principal has more sense, he/she should have encourage all normal stream students to at least try for Os.

When i entered U, the school system changed completely. The IT school was renamed and it became a true modular system. Arghhhh…..The U is not spared of unfairness. Some lecturers are more stricter than the others. The paper standards that they had set differs each semester. It truly depends on your luck on which lecturer you got for that semester. So is this fair?

Working Life:

Finally we reached the new phase of life… working. The working world is the MOST treacherous place to be in, as compared to school life. Bosses are scary, and demanding. Strangely enough, i observed some things in some of the organizations i had worked in.

Those who performed extremely well, put in lots of efforts quietly, solved tough problems which everyone else ignored, ended up getting C grades and retrenchments; whereas those who only know how to arrow people to do this and that, eventually claimed all credits in front of the boss… and they ended up being the ones who are promoted and getting Bs and As for performance grades. Isn’t this strange? No. It really depends who their direct reporting officers. It depends on how much they are willing to fight for their subordinates. So for those whose bosses did not fight for their rights, they are just plain unlucky.

After being a teacher, i begun to see things through the eyes of the bosses. We tend to value deliverables more than the process. Why? We cant measure process. We can only observe. The boss will not have the time to follow your performance every single moment. But he/she can “see” deliverables during weekly progress meetings. Aren’t we grading students like this now?

Now, just when i would like to be fair and consistent, just when i tried not to be so bias towards the top students, just when i try not to be taken in by just a teacher’s great praises for a student who failed a subject; i was totally stopped by numerous obstacles. Sigh… it’s so hard to make things right.

Life is truly unfair if you look at it from my point of view, and i guess either we lived with it, or we are out of it. You chose your own path. For me, i will chose to go with the flow and live life to the fullest. No point arguing and fighting for something which will eventually ended up in anger or tears. Period.

Stumble it!