Attendance και re:attendance

Η ιστορία έχει ως εξής. Πριν μερικές μέρες ο tutor μου, μου έστειλε ένα mail ζητώντας εξηγήσεις για την ελλιπή παρουσία μου στα εργαστήρια και στα tutorials. Και εγώ του απάντησα...σε άπταιστα Αγγλικα..
Όταν διάβασαν το mail μου, ο Κιμ και ο Bill, οι αντιδράσεις τους κυμάνθηκαν από τρελλά γέλια εώς παρατηρήσεις του στυλ "αν είναι δυνατόν", "είναι απαξιωτικό", "δεν το πιστεύω","σαν να μιλάς σε συμφοιτητή σου!...", "είναι προσβλητικό", "είναι αναρχικό" "δεν είναι καθόλου formal" και διάφορα άλλα. Εγώ πάλι δεν νομίζω, δεν ξέρω...Πάντως γέλασα πολύ με τα παιδιά και τα σχόλια που κάνανε.
Αν τα καταφέρετε να το διαβάσετε όλο πείτε μου την γνώμη σας παρακαλώ. Να σημειώσω ότι ο tutor μου δεν μου απάντησε και έχουν περάσει ήδη 5 μέρες. Ιδού λοιπόν τα 2 mail:

"Dear Iordanis,Your attendance at lab and tutorial sessions has been noted as being unsatisfactory. Please let me know (asap) why it is that you have attended only a small percentage of these timetabled sessions. Thanks.
Best,Steve. "

"Dear Sir,
Thank you for your concern and for giving me the chance to talk about this matter. I would like to be completely honest with you and please excuse me for my big mail.First of all I would like to make clear that my deficient attendance at lab and tutorial sessions (as well as at lectures) is not related to any possible lack of interest for my course. But things from the beginning didn't go well for me. A very important problem is the language. My English is not good (especially my spoken English) and this caused something like a chain reaction problem towards my overall progress at the university.

Another serious problem is that (in my opinion) the teaching ability of the majority of the lecturers is quite poor. And I am sad to say so. I wouldn't doubt that all of them are very successful scientists in their fields but that has nothing to do with their ability to make you understand. Sometimes the more highly educated is a person the more difficult is to understand him. I believe that you know what I mean. The truth is that I expected a more sufficient, well defined and declarative approach to the subjects of our classes. I am not the cleverest person in the world but surely I am not the most stupid either. In high school I was first in class in mathematics. But I have some particularities as a person. If I don?t catch a crucial point then I can't follow anymore. I understand the things in my own way and pace.Anyway this problem could probably be solved if I could ask some questions in the class. But the fact that I have difficulties with the language prevented me from doing so. Because it is natural to feel embarrassed when you are trying to speak in English in front of 150 native English people.

I also believe that we took some giant and sudden paces in the teaching material and left the most of us with gaps. But most of the students are helping each other through the companies they have made. For me this is difficult too because I am the only guy from Greece and apart from this I am 34 years old. So it is difficult from me to stick to a group. So I have to "fight" all alone.So one thing lead to another and at a certain point I realised that I couldn't follow and I had huge gaps (and a depression above all these..). Being in labs was embarrassing for me because I couldn?t even try to solve the exercises. I don't know if you have a similar expression here in England for this situation but in Greece we use to say "I was staring (the exercises) like the cow stares at the passing train". That means, I have no idea. This happened gradually and if I have something to blame myself for is that I didn't take some measures in the first place. I mean from the beginning. That could be for example to keep asking questions the lecturers inside and outside of the class. But as a person I am very tactful and shy and I didn't want to "steal" their precious time.

So finally I decided to follow my very own method in order to try not to be left behind. And that was to stay at home (drinking tones of coffee) and reading almost all day (or night) long by myself using most of the time sources from the internet. (By the way I believe that most of the notes given to us by the lecturers are extremely poor. They are more like just headlines.) That was proved to be more effective than spending my hours at the University, at least at this particular stage. Whenever I attended the full class program at the university I was returning home exhausted and I had no more energy to read by myself.

The results of my present method are not the absolute desirable but I have made a lot of progress. One of the disadvantages of my own way method is that my sleep schedule is now spoiled. I mean I usually read all night long and I can?t wake up early in the morning. So even if I wanted to attend a specific lab or lecture is sometimes impossible. Anyway I am not very optimistic about the exams but if I keep up with the hard work I have a lot of chances to pass them.Of course all these are not what I dreamt about before leaving Greece. My presence here is only mentally and isolated. I mean I could do the same things being in a distance learning program at my home and spending 1/20 of the money I am spending now.

Additionally I have no social life at all. And I am not getting any of the things that this wonderful city can offer. I love London so much but I feel like a prisoner in my apartment. The reason is that I have no free time at all and not energy.Well I don't expect from you to give me any magic solutions. Besides I am old enough and I also have already educational experience. I have a degree and a diploma in Film studies and Computer Networks respectively. The reason I wrote to you such a big mail is mostly that I wanted to say what I feel and think because this could make me feel a little bit better. So thank you for that.Of course if you believe that a further contact could be useful I would pleasantly go for it.

Yours sincerely, Jordan"