Graduation or salvation

From the University of Jordan. Unprofessional employees smoking everywhere underneath the No Smoking signs. Rudeness and dismissing inquirers are the standard behavior. I don't know where all this come from. The registration office doesn't care how long I wait, how long I walk from this place or the other repeatedly. Selfishness is at an extreme here and I got used to it unfortunately, I'm surprised that I am not surprised and I remind myself that I need to ignore it.

People who live under the fact that they are objects in a system in which they have no control and as thus behave as if the worst-case scenario that defines the shape of the community isn't worth the effort of making tiny improvements since 'a little white dot doesn't show on a black page' is one of the dominant negative quotes people embrace.

On another front, I am reminded of the importance of leaving the University, and the country. I met great people here but it's time for me to respond to the fact that my efficiency, my productivity and my spirit has been hindered by the values and lack thereof of this community. I no longer want to be a hero whose goal is to save people who don't want to be saved. I'll dedicate my leadership efforts into something of a higher nature than just telling people to stand for what's right, which is a very basic intuitive thing that in a dogmatic society like Jordan, people easily forget.

The humanity of the human life, which is what I have and of which I am reminded constantly with every heart beat and every wandering thought, is beyond the primitive societal struggles of imprisoned people jailed by there refusal to make amendments that facilitate communal progress. It's a spirit and changing it need more than a software developer. We need more cheerleaders, to cheer up who do good.

I am taking a rest before making yet another trip to the registration office to get my certificate. I hope I will be able to get everything done today, to happily say good bye to this place and all its good, bad and wonder.

I am embracing a new life, I had embraced a new life since a long time actually, but now it's done. It's here not as a wish, but as a reality that empowers me to take more solid steps towards what I want from life and I want a lot.

Edit:

Another 5 minutes. I don't want to reach the employee again too early; he said it'll take 5 minutes for the data to propagate the system. It's nothing compared to the time I wasted here running from place to place trying to add courses, or know where my classes are (they used to change them from what is reported in the class schedule almost everytime), struggling to create schedule (finding classes) and then have them cancelled almost every semester, and it goes on and on.

There are absolutely lots of things I'm going to miss here. Lots of cute girls is one of them, unfortunately, most of them are until-marriage virgins. I'll miss my naivety and the simplicity of my behavior at times; I was freerer. Time to unlearn, relearn and then learn.

Advanced C++ and responsibility

I was a really focused person. I didn’t pay attention to the people around me with all the interfering psychological elements of being a part in a group, except when I had to show some manners like when I was revising some of the concepts of that Advanced C++ class after the lecture: there was me and a guy (who wasn’t a friend at the time) and we were separately experimenting with the clunky Visual C++ 6 IDE, way before .NET, there was a girl sitting shyly with a smile looking at me and doing nothing. So I decided I will just keep her company since she so politely asked for it. The other guy joined the conversation and then I’ve let them enjoy it and got back to what I was doing. I really enjoyed that class and I’m not recalling some interesting moments.

Dr. M A, let’s call him so. He was an enthusiastic lecturer and I enjoyed his class. After the class finished I kept meeting people who were very interested in me (I thought it was because of some superficial reason) and then I would realize that they have taken that class with me. After a while I thought that interestingly, my behavior in that class wasn’t so common and commanded lots of respect from all those people that I don’t even remember (since I was so focused-but unfortunately I missed on many relationships that might have proven to be interesting).

I was the accurate kind. In one lecture the professor was giving an example when he said “let’s say we have ‘Seen’ [the Arabic letter that corresponds to ‘S’,] the ASCII code of which…” that’s when I interrupted (some of the lectures had a more casual interactive format) saying: “You mean Unicode, there is no ASCII for ‘Seen’”. He smiled saying that is if I want to keep track of such subtle matters and continued. I felt satisfied.

The lectures continued through the semester and one day he was late. So I’ve written on the computer which was connected to the projector something blaming him for being late. I was just joking, with the professor with whom I felt I started to become friends. But when he saw it, he got upset and decided to punish everyone saying that he is the one in charge of the lectures and no one had authority to blame him. I think he thought it was disrespectful. Feeling guilty, I was waiting for him to finish to apologize. And when he said that he was going to punish everyone by taking off marks, I stood up and said that I am ready to take responsibility for what I have done. He asked me to sit down, ignoring my admission.

I saw him after the lecture and I asked him why he didn't take it simply as a lighthearted joke. He told me that people here (in the University of Jordan) were the kind that takes the opportunity to disrespect and the kind the schemes and talks behind one’s back. There is rarely pure and simply honesty here. I apologized and we remained on good terms. It was easy for me, someone who loves what they study, to get along with his professors.

He also gave me one of the most important social interaction advice that took me years to understand: “dealing with people through layers of indirection, or interfaces.”

Now going back to my colleagues, I think they admired my readiness to admit and face the consequences. Another clue of having the incident attracting attention is one guy’s remark saying that the blame should be on the person who did it even after I have admitted it (the professor insisted on punishing everyone) and it was obvious who that guy to blame was. I don’t like to deal with people who just like to make provocative remark and my response was just mere short eye contact.

BSc times, I had to do lots of maturing up…