The nazi teacher

During my final year of university, I reached the pinnacle of living by the moment. On a normal day, I spend at least 3 hours a day practicing with a partner whilst struggling with four classes that involves projects. There was never time to think and I resolved to drinking a caffeine/wine mix beverage to keep me relaxed and concentrated in classes.

It was during that time when I met the teacher that changed my view about engineering…

I hated Klaus Kannemann with a passion.

What’s supposed to be two easy classes in computer architecture and computer networking dished out the equivalent workload of 4 classes. Usually, a project is taken as a 4 credit class of its own. In the cases when integrated into a lecture style class, they are usually easy. He was a replacement teacher for the two classes that semester and I was unlucky enough to get need those two to graduate that semester.

“I know it’s hard work and you won’t like me for it, but this is how the real world works and in this class, I decide what you have to do. You’ll thank me for it later.” He announced one day with his thick German accent and a frown turn smiles into blight. He is the human embodiment of the most stereotypical archtype of a German snob and I hated him with a passion.

After classes, my dance practice last from 7PM to 10PM and I’d have to head to the “Unic lab” as my dance partner calls it and churn out codes till the wee hours in the morning just for him. I swore and cursed all the time and detested the guy with all my passion. But, I have to agree with his last statement, therefore I am thanking him. Without him, I’d never been able to do the following: Knowing how to use UNIX, knowing how to program multi-threaded and multi-processor applications, knowing how to write client-server protocols and applications from scratch and understanding that whether or not a project gets approval depends purely on interpersonal skills.

Our mid term report for the project got a 50% mark on it because of problems in our design. It was infuriating because I know for a fact that the other group’s codes are all derivatives of the codes I’ve written. We contested the marking and got our grade lowered to 48% as he found “serious flaws in the code”. I think I’ve pissed him off royally at this time.

I passed the class barely, but it wasn’t because of some great project, it was because I aced the final. Later, I would reflect on how someone who copied from me can get a 80% mark, whilst another group who never worked on it nor showed up to the lab (i.e. they found the code from his previous students) gets 90%. My only conclusion is that it doesn’t matter how good your code is. You only need to get it to work, the rest is up to the sucking up or sugar coating of your relationship.
If you are an engineer studying in University of Ottawa, avoid the teacher named K.K at all cost.