Really, it’s just too awesome when your worst critics unwittingly prove your point. Over and over again.

My previous post about a particular breed of university students who are – I’d better put this nicely for a change - less than enterprising, ruffled quite a few feathers. Unfortunately for the brigade of students who were falling over themselves to explain why I should be burnt at the stake, the majority of reactions turned out to be a rather efficient exercise in hole-digging. 

There were the refreshing exceptions. The university students who are very well-aware that they break the mould of self-entitlement. Their reactions were more on the lines of “this doesn’t apply to me, so why should I be offended?” To these, I take off my hat. 

Then there were the others. Those who used barely legible English to communicate their disagreement. And there’s also the anonymous student who first decided to submit the email to a blog but who lacked the courage of his convictions to stand by what he wrote and proceeded to claim “misinterpretation” – though how you can misinterpret the words “excruciatingly boring” and “pathetic” is beyond me.

I will defend the right of said student to make public an official University of Malta communication. There is no issue of it being “rude” or otherwise; lecturer to student communications are in the public domain. But once it’s uploaded, don’t cry foul when it’s picked up by the media and when the general mood doesn’t reflect your thinking.

Oh, and just a small heads-up. When a blogger takes a diametrically opposed view to yours, we don’t call it “misinterpretation”. We call it a different point of view.

The deepest hole-digging was probably carried out by those who proceeded to offer detailed insight into why, exactly, a student’s lot is the hardest and why we should all just shut up already. Because of course, this whole university lark is a new one and before the current crop of students, none of us had ever set foot into a lecture theatre.

So here’s another heads-up. All those nasty bloggers who were less than amused with your response at the lecturer’s email are all former university students. And chances are, they’ve been through their fair share of boring lectures. I know I have; try finding me an exciting way to explain the laws of international taxation and I’ll eat my hat a second time.

Did we whine? Some of us did. They’re probably stuck in some dead end job right now because they were too busy whining to make the grade.

Award for cutest comment, however, goes to this one – and I’m lifting verbatim from the comments board:

“I don't know what type of technology might reach your stuck-up and egotistic hole you might have crawled out of, but that's not how Facebook works!! Do you honestly have nothing better to do with your life than criticise the university students you are so jealous of?”

Logical debate be hanged - nothing will win you an argument as fast as saying “you’re just jealous”. That’s right mate, deep down I’m dying to go back to campus to pick up a fourth piece of paper with which to embellish my CV.

Oh and just in case you’re wondering, the part about “that’s not how Facebook works” arose because the poor blighter doesn’t even understand plain sentence construction. Well, to be fair, judging by the construction of his own sentences he must have found English language classes very boring indeed.

I’m pretty sure that boredom in primary school is also responsible for the way a dismayingly large amount of students failed to grasp the correct meaning of “a campus full of self-entitled twerps”. Allow me to enlighten you: no, it does not mean that the description applies to every single blessed student. I most certainly was not including myself, and I’m a product of said campus.

Maybe a simplistic example is in order: if I tell you that my neighbourhood is no longer safe because it’s full of criminals, I’m not calling myself a criminal. Go on, figure it out.

Like I said. Give them enough rope...