1. I was in my last semester at the Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu (Hermann Oberth Faculty of Engineering). I've seen them all: indiferent/bad/absent/incompetent/moody teachers. I had only one final exam to pass (it was the graphics programming course) and i had to take that exam. I still hate that teacher (yeah, you Rodica Baciu, I'm talking about you) because of her incompetence, but it's all over now.
2. As every student that finishes a University, I still had one final exam to pass, in order to graduate: the thesis exam. I went to my teacher and ask him if he agrees for me to study the problem of "Buffer overflows in modern operating systems" as my final thesis exam. He said it's ok, and ok it was.
For ~3 months I was living and breathing my thesis. I had an average of 50 tabs on the subject, opened with Google Chrome. I learned a lot. It was really insane!
3. I already wrote my thesis, i even had the working exploit for my Winamp 5.572 target. It was the day before I should have presented, and out of curiosity I went to the University to see the level of the thesis. After seeing this, I backed down from my original tought of 100 slides to only 20 slides, because of the short time (20 minutes/student).
4. My time to present has comed. After 5 minutes I've seen the look on one of my teachers (Lucian Vintan) and he asked me: "How is this still possible? I thought that they solved this problem by now!". I've said that it's an ongoing battle against the good and the bad guys, and it's never game over. He understood and stood still, but the others started to ask me questions in a hotical manner, and my answers were the same (not the quality, but the answers).
Instead of being there for 20 minutes, I was in there for 50 minutes and my teachers graded me with 8,55. I was really upset! It wasn't the grade that upset me, it was that i've seen it in their eyes that they didn't understood everything that i've done, and that they can't acknowledge my hard work that i've invested in my thesis.
5. I was furious, mad, hurt and after 1 day of healing, i went yesturday to the University to assist to the thesis exam of another "University", Roger. I stood there for 3 hours and after that I've seen the diference between us and them and our teachers and theirs.
"What's an object? What's the role of syncronization reggarding operating system process? How would you describe the process of sincronization in real life?..." these were the simple questions that they had to face, and unfortunately they didn't knew the answers to this simple questions. It was amuzing and sad in the same time...
One teacher asked me at the end: "How do you feel, now that you've seen the quality of others?". I replyed: "I feel like a little/big genius. Thank you from the buttom of my heart for every second that you've all spent learning us, because you did a heck of a job". We shaked hands and I left.
Now it doesn't matter. I'm not mad anymore about my thesis grade. I've moved on. Now I realize, that what I have done is far more important than a simple grade. I've learned to learn, i've learn to write a thesis, to know my place (for the moment being), to know what i know and the teachers gave their best in order to pass their knowledge to us. This is more important than any grade that I could have been given.
Now the University road has comed to an end for me. It's time to get a job, give my best and prove myself. Another road has started, but I want to end this post with this simple and honest message, and my full gratitude:
Thank you, my dear teachers !!!
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