Why I have trouble passing exams...

(From my autobiography - "Age of Consent")

1.     nineteen, going twenty.

“I’d” like to see the Head of Department please”.

The department secretary looked up at me from her desk under the sliding window surprised to see anyone.

“I’m sorry Mr Kelly is on leave until 2^nd semester. Can I ask what it is about ?”

“I have a letter from the Department advising me to speak with the Head of Department for advice regarding an appeal against my course status.”

“Oh well, Mr O’Neil is acting Head of Department while Mr Kelly is away. He’s actually in his office at the moment. His office is the down the corridor third on the left.”

It was July 1978. A crisp but sunny winter day. At 10:30am, letter in hand, I made my way down narrow and the poorly lit corridor. Functional, yet spartan and cramped, the Department of Computing and Quantitative studies smelt of computers, mathematics, and logic. It was the smell of ink and paper, cool rooms and hot VDU’s, new carpet and old sweat.

I knocked gently, at the open door.

 “Yes, Mr Anderson. And what can I do for you today?”

He was expecting me. In the 18 months since we first met, I had hardly spoken a word to John O’Neil. The only exchange we ever had was when he tried to correct me for my using a documentation technique I picked up from the voluminous Digital Equipment Corporation DEC-1020 manuals I had acquired at great expense to myself. I had been reading them like a starving man who just sat down to a feast. My appetite for machine code was insatiable. But O’Neil couldn’t appreciate my technical writing style.

“Syntactic documentation style is a very difficult technique”, he insisted, “and takes many years to learn to do correctly. More importantly it is not required for this assignment and you are lucky I decided not to mark you down. We have a documentation style we require of students and you are to use that style.”. It was also the moment I realised I must have absolutely nothing further to do with O’Neil. 12 months had passed since then.

There was no way of avoiding it - John O’Neil was an ugly man. A strong unapologetic Canadian accent, straight light grey hair, cut cheaply, too tall, lanky, and a loud foul mouth full of crooked and chipped teeth ready to snarl at anyone who mistook him for an American. He overcompensated for what might have been his natural look with a belligerent attitude, loud Hawaiian shirts to go with his booming voice, and worn flared jeans fashionable at the time. But his hip fashion sense only highlighted his barbaric and loud persona. He was altogether an ugly sight.

I had entered his small lecturer’s room conservatively dressed, perhaps overdressed for a 19 year old student. But it was winter and I was working part time. Formal leather jacket, silk tie, formal trousers and shirt, business shoes.

It was a completely uncool dress code for a late 1970’s university student, unless you wanted to appear rich. I was not rich, but had acquired my new wardrobe after a 2 week holiday to Manila and Hong Kong in May. It was my first trip overseas, funded by my grandmother.

“Please, have a seat.”

He gestured toward the only other chair in the room, a comfortable low recliner against the wall at the door. It was remarkably well placed in the small office, being just close enough to lean forward and reach his desk but far enough away to lean back and feel at ease.

I sat down and leaned forward, intent on discussing my business. I began to answer his question by reference to the letter, but stopped me in my tracks with…

“You can close that door behind you if you like”.  He was grinning at me like a Cheshire cat.

I looked at the door. I didn’t like. I hadn’t come for an intimate conversation. I already knew from previous encounters that allowing lecturers to shut the door in discussions was for their benefit, not the student’s. I got the distinct impression he was humouring me. He adopted completely implausible histrionics of presuming that I (a student in distress) had obviously sought out him – meaning him in particular - for his personal counsel. At least, that was his body language. He already had it completely wrong, and I hadn’t uttered a word. Reluctantly I reached over and closed the door. I was becoming nervous.

“No, no, that’s fine….” I started, but he wasn’t asking. He was telling.

He motioned with his hand to shut the door with his condescending grin, tacitly hinting his appreciation of the predicament I was in.

I pushed the door closed and turned to look at O’Neil. My hands were sweating. His thoughts were an open book written all over his plain ugly face. He looked at me cheerfully like an executioner about to do his job. To him I was just another failed university student about to beg in vain for another chance.

---

I first met O’Neil 18 months earlier in December 1976. I had applied to transfer at the end of my 1^st year of an Electronics Engineering degree to the Business Degree in Information Processing. He proudly boasted to me at the time, “You do realize, don’t you, that our course is harder than Engineering”. I didn’t believe him then and nothing has changed since. It’s actually hard to imagine how any rational person could seriously make such a claim.

Electronics Engineering was then and will forever remain a much harder course than a 3 year Business degree in anything, especially Business Information Processing. The Engineering student must complete a 5 year degree in 4 year timeframe, and the units are themselves demanding. By contrast, computing units in 1977 were too easy, and the teaching was by rote. The science was advancing at a pace much faster than the academics could keep up with. There were not enough competent computing lecturers to offer full computing degrees so the lower profile tertiary institutions propped up their computing courses with unrelated subjects and obsolete science. At WAIT they easily justified the marriage of IT and commerce based on industry demand. “All our graduates get jobs” was the marketing propaganda. But the science suffered. WAIT was simply delivering students to meet the local business demand, not the evolving computer science.

So in the late 1970’s microprocessor boom, enthusiastic electronics oriented computing students like myself - interested in computer science - connected in small ad-hoc groups to fill in for the inadequate course work, sharing ideas and doing our own research.

And O’Neil’s comment was that of a man who, even before I had met him, was in total denial about the low standard and the dubious ethics of business computing courses offered in Western Australia.

But at that time I didn’t particularly care what he thought.

What mattered to me was computing. I was intoxicated by its logical purity. It was the intellectual stimulation I had craved after a decade of chronic underachievement at a hopelessly corrupt expensive private school, steeped in hypocrisy, nepotism and favouritism. Technically failing my second last year of high school (year 11) and coming 2^nd last among my peers was the only distinction I ever received at Hale School. In my 1974 Physics exam I even managed to get 0% in spite of answering every question. Yet no-one said anything. Not a word. It woke me up to the fact that no one cared. Not my School House master, none of my teachers, not even my parents. By the last term it finally dawned on me that I needed to assume control of this situation, or I’d fail my final year and I’d have to give up the cosy lifestyle I had become accustomed to as a chronic underachiever in a class of chronic overachievers. In the final term I demanded that the school allow me to drop 2 units I knew I wouldn’t pass so I could focus on those I could. The school put up a fight for appearance sake, but I could see through it and was not taking no for an answer. I simply made it clear to the damn hypocrites that a damn was the one thing I knew they didn’t give. They predictably and quickly relented, and I repaid their complete apathy with a 65% final year high school result.

It was way more than Hale School deserved from me after 10 years of being confused, abused and bored out of my brain, but more than enough to be accepted into Electronics Engineering at WA Institute of Technology in 1975 (WAIT, now Curtin University). At the same time, the student I had been loitering with who managed to come last in my 4^th year peer group and was all but dragging me down with him, was offered a place at the prestigious top rank University of WA, in spite of having failed to qualify for anything. The reason given for this was because of injury the year before exams, which was indeed the case, but the hidden reality was that his father was a well known in the Engineering profession. He had influence at UWA and used it. It was the sort of moral bankruptcy Hale School had built its reputation on. The School Motto – “Duty” – said it all. A meaningless four letter word, to be seen, not uttered. It could only have had less meaning of it had been in latin.

But my being accepted into Engineering at WAIT meant that when I decided to transfer to a computing degree after the first year there were only two University courses I could do that had a strong computing element and would accept me. The premier university, UWA, did have a more attractive computing-oriented engineering degree but they could not accept me because of the competition from overachievers wanting to impress their parents.

So it was either the School of Business or the School of Mathematics, both at WAIT.  It was a tough decision. I chose the business degree because it had a Law unit. There was nothing else available to me. Anywhere. I looked at every possible tertiary degree and certificate in WA. There was little choice.

---

As I waited for O’Neil to say something he had the look of suppressed elation on him like a man with a fish biting his hook. Displaying no apparent awareness of my “course terminated” status, he continued acting out his charade of the friendly approachable lecturer counselling a distressed student who had wisely accepted one of his many exhortations during lectures to see him about personal issues.

“Don’t wait until it’s too late”, he and sidekick unit coordinator Heinz Dreher would tell the large class of up to 50 or more students. “If you are having difficulties come and see us. Our door is always open”. And I wouldn’t have been so suspicious of their incessant invitations to confide in them if it were not for the four letter expletives that tastelessly decorated their monologues at every lecture. That and the fact that my usual encounters with Dreher always ended with his accusing me of “standing on my pride” - whatever that meant, and to “pull my head in” - whatever that meant. I had no idea what he was talking about. What pride? Do what with my head? Why? I had nothing to confide in him. It was absolutely bizarre.

But I hadn’t come to see either of these foul mouthed wannabe mentors. The letter advising me of my course termination stated that if I wished to lodge an appeal against my status I should contact the Head of the Department.  The Head of the Department however was on leave and the receptionist directed me to O’Neil instead.

O’Neil knew full well about the circular sent to all “course terminated” students. He knew he would have to deal with them. It was the only reason he had to be there during the mid-year break. He must have done this hundreds of times before during his tenure.

I didn’t like O’Neil, if only because of the prolific profanity and aggression at his lectures – it was way over the top. He also had an overt professional insecurity – all he knew well enough to teach was Cobol, and Cobol was becoming obsolete, making him constantly defensive about it. I was nervous about talking to O’Neil about anything. In fact, the last time we talked was probably the day I first met him, 18 months earlier.

“So  what can I do for you, today, Mr Anderson?” he ventured again with his overly cheerful grin.

We both knew why I was there. The receptionist would have told him if nothing else. I needed to discuss how to appeal my course terminated status. But O’Neil wasn’t going to entertain any of it. He had his own ideas about my entitlement to appeal.

He laid back in his seat and started to own the meeting. Both feet were now up on his desk in an avuncular but misplaced display of shared contempt for authority, as if to appeal to his projection of a rebellious but outdated James Dean type character in me. He knew what I needed to discuss but was inviting me to trust him beyond that. He wanted to counsel me, or so it seemed.

But what was abundantly clear by now was that he indeed wanted the door closed for his own benefit. I had absolutely no desire to be intimate with this acerbic creep.

I felt extremely uneasy. My hands were shaking.  I felt suddenly trapped like a child about to be molested by a family member who had been given complete trust over me. Nothing I was about to say would have made any difference to his attitude. But, the momentum of 12 years of increasing intellectual isolation and emotional starvation was upon me, and almost like a reflex I caved in to the power of suggestion and the opportunity to trust O’Neil with my most intimate and sensitive question.

“Mr O’Neil, …..”, not knowing quite how to put it. So I just let it out.

“Do you know why I can’t….., can’t…, “get along”…. at WAIT?”.

It was a rhetorical question of course. Anticipating the sympathetic “No. Why?” rhetorical response, my next sentence was already forming in my head as I tried to keep my composure…

“I don’t know, I just can’t seem to…” was as far as I got in my thoughts, when…

“YES!...” he shouted, triumphantly. 

His voice boomed off the thin wooden partitions of the small room, adding a distinct acoustic reverberation effect to his exclamation as he pounced victoriously …

“…because the course is not intellectually challenging enough for you!”.

O’Neil swung away in his chair like a TV detective who had discovered whodunnit. He started talking into space, as if explaining to the astonished suspects how he had caught out the villain. Stunned, my jaw indeed dropped, open, wide, gaping.

“I’ve had students come and tell me and try to how much they know before…”, he shouted gleefully, as he opened hostilities in what was to become an impromptu 90 minute lecture-cum-tirade.

“…they dress themselves up and wear expensive clothes… they discover booze and start fucking members of the opposite sex and get distracted from their studies, …and of course pretty soon they think they’re hot shit and they know fucking everything…. And you know the funny thing is that in spite of knowing it all, these fucking smart arses seem to forget their study obligations and spend too much time socializing and fucking around …. Before they know where they are they’re falling behind and failing units. I’ve seen it all before, Anderson and you’re not the first fucking student to come to me telling me how fucking clever you are…. I remember when…”.

As I rapidly lost interest in what he was saying I became aware of my gaping jaw. He hadn’t looked at me once during this time, as if he was afraid even to look. I slowly closed my mouth without his noticing it was ever open.

He was right, though. The course wasn’t intellectually challenging enough for anyone actually interested in computing. His candid admission that other students had made the same complaint about the course would have been encouraging if not for his refusal to take it seriously. Business studies is an incredibly boring sideshow for enthusiastic computing students. No doubt he had perfected the treatment I was getting now on all the other students who had made the mistake of taking up his bogus “open door” offer. It was the same mantra repeated ad nausea in the lectures. “Our door is always open”. But then, of course “always” only meant while it suited them. The door behind me was very much closed, and it was too late to get off my pride now. It was time to be punished for my disobedience.

The irony of it is that I also had seen this all before. The denial, the jealousy, the abuse, the humiliation and being taken for a fool. The wholesale deprivation of intellectual challenge had become the story of my life.

A conflict between my long academic record of scholastic failure and a growing awareness of my intellectual giftedness had, not coincidentally, bought me to a crisis point. I had been an underachiever for well over a decade but, in the rich intellectual environment of University, my intellectual pursuits were out of control.  My passion for machine level computing was making me even more socially alienated from my former peers than ever. Far from spending time “fucking” women as O’Neil suggested, my every waking and sleeping moment was spent thinking about the next complex algorithm I could program or next computer language I could learn. Yet I continued to underperform academically. It didn’t make sense.

He ranted on for a good ten minutes. It was incredible. I couldn’t believe the man’s bastardry. I was no longer stunned. I was becoming impatient, then angry. He was trashing my last hope of realising my intellectual passion.

“Damn you O’Neil” I thought to myself, “I nearly had it”. The illusion of finally unburdening myself onto someone - even a bastard like O’Neil - anyone who would listen, had vanished.

Yet my mind was racing. There was something exploding in me, and then it hit me.

“That’s it", I thought. "That’s exactly what I mean. This is the problem. This is what I get every time the subject of my ability comes up. Ridicule. NO. I’m NOT letting it go this time. I am GOING to have this discussion.”

Fuel up with adrenaline, I prepared. And waited. And waited. And waited.

By the time his long monologue finally came to an end, I was more than ready to confront this monumental coward with the truth I had been denying myself of for more than half my lifetime.

“…and obviously – obviously to me that is, not necessarily obvious to you - obviously to me, once you fail a unit a third time your course is terminated. Unfortunately those are the fucking rules Anderson and there is nothing I can do about that I’m afraid, no matter how fucking clever you might think you are.”

His rant finished, he paused to now look at me. He expected something from me but got silence.

“So now that I have explained all this to you what do you think you’ll do with yourself in you new career ?”, he prompted.

“Well, obviously…,” I started, using his own word,”…  I can’t expect …”

Before I could finish my first sentence in reply he interrupted in a paranoid shot at his own shadow.

“Obviously to you, Mr Anderson. Obvious to you. Not necessarily obvious to me.”, he objected, like a prosecution lawyer protesting at credible witness for the defence. “Now I gave you the benefit of that doubt.”

I detected a faint trace of fear in his pedantic interjection. And I got the distinct impression he knew what I was going to say but didn’t want to hear it. Perhaps it would shatter the stereotype of me that he had just spent the last ten minutes constructing. Fighting back my emotions, I just stared at him with a poker face Steve McQueen would be proud of, and left him hanging with no reply.

My uncomfortable silence enticed him into having a second go.

He started rattling on again in his loud Canadian drawl. I wasn’t listening too closely. He mentioned something about Dreher’s more generous treatment of students, probably referring to my getting the student Guild involved in a dispute I had with Dreher.

---

Dreher had said from the outset that if an assignment is more than 5 days late “…well there is no point in handing it in because you won’t get any marks for it”. So inevitably, when I was more than 5 days late with a final assignment (for reasons I don’t recall) I didn’t hand it in. After exams my brother and I left immediately for a 4 week 4WD trip to Darwin. When we got to Wittenoom and made our first call back home I was told Dreher had called saying I my overdue final assignment was a mandatory requirement and I needed to hand in by tomorrow or I would fail the unit. I called Dreher, explained the situation, and negotiated a 2 week extension, but it wasn’t without a serious fight. Dreher denied ever saying not to bother handing in assignments over 5 days late, suggesting I had just made this up.

Disappointed, we cut our trip short and turned back after reaching Broome. I dropped the assignment into the submission box, got zero for it, and still passed the unit with 72% as expected. Then I got the student Guild involved over Dreher’s dishonesty, denial and hypocrisy in accusing me. The Guild managed to get Dreher to back off. I know this for a fact because just as I was about to knock on Heinz’s half open door to confront him myself about this matter, I heard him on the phone to the Guild talking about me. He was putting up a strident denial of what he had said to the whole class about late assignments, but the Guild argued just as adamantly back. They didn’t believe him. Somewhat vindicated, I left before he ended the call and let it go, but my faith in the university plummeted. The course handout below provided all the rules in full so there would be no excuses. There was nothing about a mandatory final assessment. Dreher had made it up it, just for me.

---

O’Neil finally wound up his convoluted reasoning out loud concluding…
“…but then Heinz is young and in my experience with other students who didn’t belong at university - oh, and you are no different from any other student, Anderson, there will be enormous pressure from your peers and relatives to complete your studies, and this can make it even harder to accept failure.”

It was a living nightmare as I listened to him say this. He was like Hitler warming up to a great oration and already past the point of believing his own rhetoric. O’Neil finished to another uncomfortable silence. I felt as sick as an innocent black man who had just been handed a death sentence from a racist Texas judge.

After a long pause, his next put down upped the ante.

“So when did you first realise you had this problem?”  he dangled, referring to my original question, and trying to bait me with an even more insulting innuendo about my intellectual capacity.

It was a major misjudgment on ONiel’s part, and he was about to find out why. I was still thinking we might get to talk about my submitting an appeal, but my brain had stopped working. I was already becoming dizzy from adrenal exhaustion. I succumbed to the illusion of his apparent newfound interest in my welfare.

“Ever since….” 

I was trying to say ‘ever since second year’, a time I began descending into crippling introspection, loneliness and depression way beyond mere adolescent self-consciousness. By the middle of second year I was feeling intensely alone, and which had persisted and intensified further in spite of my best efforts, even to the moment I walked into O’Neil’s office. I had to get this sense of isolation out where I could deal with it. It was destroying me.

But something had seized control of my tongue …

“Ever since grade two.”

I couldn’t believe what I had just said.

But I instantly knew what it meant. It was the year I started at Hale School – a private Anglican boarding School for boys. The year I started drifting into isolation and boredom. The year I started my decline in academic performance from top of a large Merredin State School class in grade 1, to perpetual failure thereafter.  The year I lost interest in all schoolwork.

It surprised us both.

O’Neil was stumped. He had expected a reaction, not a response. It took the wind out of him. He seemed to realise he was way out of his depth but it was too late. He had to follow through with his counselling charade. My complete candor had alarmed me, and only inspired O’Neil to act out even more dramatically his self-appointed role of amateur psychologist. I had to wake up fast. I needed to stop confiding in him. But a decade of repressed emotions had taken over. I couldn’t stop. I had to know the truth, at any cost.

He started rattling on again about how I need to accept that I really wasn’t suited to computing or university and that I really needed to consider the great many other “fucking” opportunities that awaited me in the workforce. But he was way off target. After another 5 or 10 minute foul mouthed monologue, making it all up as fast as his perverted and deranged mind would let him, he now carefully aimed at his newfound target with as much vitriol as he could pour into one sick question:

“…and, what are you going to do with yourself now you know you have these special powers?”

But I wasn’t biting any more.

“I don’t know”.

I shrugged my shoulders, as if I didn’t notice the bastard’s insulting put down for what it was. I was forcing myself with every sinew I could muster to repress every emotion, just to regain my composure enough to deal with this psychopath. And it was crucifying me.

Rapidly running out of ammunition, O’Neil became even more irritated, insisting a second time I didn’t belong at University.

“You know there are a lot of fucking arseholes here and they come to university just to bludge on the dole and waste our fucking time, but at the end of the fucking day they still end up failing. And that might have been fine a few years ago, because they could just fuck off to another course and start all over again. But we’ve woken up to those fucking arseholes now. When I was a student, once you’re out you were fucking out for good. Anderson, It took me ten fucking years to get my first degree, what makes you think...”, and so on.

He continued for another 5 or 10 minutes, but he was talking to himself. My patience would have run out except for the fact that by now I was numb. I was starting to enjoy watching the bloodletting, even though it was my own blood, as I kept turning the other cheek with O’Neil. He was taking everything I said the way he wanted to, and I put up no particular resistance.

“…and so you see, Mr Anderson, we are not vindictive bastards in this Department. Its simply that you have had your chance and there is really nothing more that we need to discuss.”

He gestured for me to leave.

I sat there.

In spite of O’Neil’s tacitly admitting to full knowledge of my course terminated status and the reason I had ended up in his room, it simply didn’t register that he knew all about the letter in my hand. Instead, I thought, at last, an opportunity to focus attention back on the letter. The moment I had been waiting for all this time. The opportunity to have the discussion I wanted to have. I went on the offensive and in one fell swoop stole the discussion right back from under O’Niel’s nose.

“So, why am I here?”, I asked, confident that I could now raise the subject, not even noticing the irony of this poorly repressed deep personal question about my own identity. Thankfully, the Freudian slip went under O’Neil’s radar.

He shrugged his shoulders. ”I don’t know”, smiling at his own conceit in his parody of my last response. But the tide had turned and O’Niel hadn’t woken up to it. I was now in control of this discussion.

I was about to say “My mother and I decided that I should appeal against my course terminated status…” except that no sooner had I got out the words “My Mother” when he screamed …

“ANDERSON. WHAT DO YOU OWE YOUR MOTHER?”

I couldn’t believe it. I would have been stunned again except I hadn’t recovered from his last sickening insult.

I thought to myself ‘Well, just what do I owe you?’ as he paused to catch his breath. Then, almost as if he hadn’t said anything at all, he carried on in a monologue like he was my guardian angel.

 “I remember the best thing I ever did was when I said ‘Sorry Mum, I’ve gone and joined the Army.….”

He now started on my mother. As he rattled on for another 5-10 minutes, louder than ever. He explained his theory yet again that parents pressured their children to go to university, and yet more paranoid theories about why I didn’t belong there. By now I was so high on adrenaline I was floating on air. I let him wear himself out yet again at my expense in a way Mohammed Ali would have been proud of. But I was still on the front foot and O’Neil was on the defensive. When he finally finished throwing his by now weak and ineffective psychological punches I quietly responded with a sting of my own.

“Perhaps you don’t know how bad it’s got Mr O’Neil. It’s got to the stage where I’m asking myself, why you said that”,

…referring to his comment about my mother. I glared at him with a stare of such righteous indignation that it would have melted steel. It hit home. I had him right where I wanted him. Defending himself.

 “No, no. Don’t do that….”, he pleaded in feigned terror as if my soul was in mortal peril and he gave a damn.

I sat in yet more disbelief as O’Neil, went from completely paranoid to totally insane. This 50 something year old 6 foot plus man suddenly screamed at me, a nineteen year old 5 foot nothing 70kg weakling, in a voice that could be heard through a closed door all the way to the end of a fifty foot corridor…

“WHY DON’T YOU LISTEN TO WHAT THEY SAY?”

He was shouting at me so loud my ears hurt.

As we both waited for his point to make its psychological impact, and for the reverberation of his voice to stop bouncing off the walls, and as soon as quietness had been restored, all by itself, a voice, without hesitation, boomed into the room and into our collective thoughts with starling clarity:

“Because the course is not intellectually challenging enough for you.”

Without a word spoken, O’Neil’s own cynical accusation from 30 minutes ago now resonated in our heads in reply to his own deranged question. But it wasn’t O’Neil saying it.  It didn’t even make sense. But this voice from nowhere had authority, meaning. It was no longer a statement or accusation. It was like a judgement, a testament against him, an intercession, and delivered by someone else standing in the room. But nobody else was there.

I was too dizzy from ONiel’s paranoid abuse to discern whether or not this paranormal telepathic event was even real. O’Neil sat stupefied with unprovoked rage mixed with complete disbelief at what we both just heard. We sat there staring at each other, him expressionless, me still glaring at him, unmoved.

After what seemed like an eternity he couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

“All right. All right. I don’t care.” he shouted as if speaking in reluctant submission to the other entity in the room.

He sat back on his chair, in retreat. I was still glaring, his eyes still locked on mine with equal ferocity. He looked away to break the gaze and refocused, staring back at me, looking like the fool he was trying to match my glare.

“I’ve had people try to HYPNOTISE ME before” he shouted accusatorially. But it came across weakly, and impotent, as if trying to explain what just happened.

He tried to hypnotise me back with a goggle eyed stare back at me as he spoke, desperate to outsmart me, not understanding why he was reeling. It was infantile.

He had gone completely troppo. I was completely spent. The stress of this strange encounter of the abusive kind had become too much. I was starting to burn up inside from adrenal exhaustion. I couldn’t persist with the man further. I had to leave, now. I started trying to extract myself out of the semi-reclined seat when…

“That’s very dangerous”.

He wasn’t going to let me leave. Voices from Heaven were not going to stop him. I thought about getting up and just going anyway.  I wish I had.  It was only half time for O’Niel.

 “How do you mean?” I enquired. “Do you think I’ll end up like some sort of Dean Elsner character?”

“Who’s Dean Elsner?” he asked, straight away breaking out of the new charade he had just started.

He probably thought I was referring to a University Dean. Our entire conversation had been littered with these ambiguities and double meanings. As if in a tragic comedy, O’Neil seemed unable to discern any ambiguity at all, misreading everything that could possibly be misread the way he wanted it to read.

Dean Elsner[1], I briefly explained, was a 3^rd year UWA computing student and president of the UWA Computer Club. What I didn't say was that Dean was well regarded by fellow students because of his ability to do things with the university computer system well beyond the understanding of anyone in control. He was a quintessential computer “hacker”, before “hacking” became a pejorative term. I often wondered and marveled at how the University allowed Dean to run riot on the multi million dollar UWA computers, but I also envied his ability to engage everyone he met in his latest project. He was incredibly selfless and hugely energetic.

But how bizarre. In a meeting to discuss how to lodge my appeal against Course Terminated status, the most I ever got to tell O’Neil was who Dean Elsner was. It was also the most I ever managed to say to O’Neil in one reply.

“I’ve never even heard of the man.”, he retorted dismissively. “No. I don’t mean like that”, as he slipped back into character.

O’Neil was coming at me again, and he was spoiling for another tirade, as if he hadn’t inflicted enough damage. There was a long pause. He looked at me intensely, like he was a doctor diagnosing a serious condition.

“I mean, that’s very dangerous for you.”

Another pause. Changing character yet again after his tirade of insults and put downs, O’Neil stopped for the first time to politely ask a civil question, albeit only to enlist my assistance in his unrestrained vilification of me.

“Anderson…”  he asked suddenly smiling warmly as fast as a chameleon changes colour. “What’s you IQ ?”

I looked at him, surprised, and inappropriately flattered, like a ray of sunshine had appeared in the middle of a cyclone. Perhaps there was some hope. But I didn’t know, and now that the question had been asked I felt not knowing was the wrong answer.

“I don’t know” I said ashamedly, bracing myself for the next imminent devastating and demoralising insult to my intelligence.

I waited for ONiel to act out the rest of his, by now, not even poorly disguised affected outrage at my daring to assert my right of appeal.

But O’Neil was looking uncomfortable. Another long pause. He put his mentor’s persona back on before continuing, but the wind had just been taken out of his sails. I didn’t get. He struggled as he offered more worthless advice in yet another paranoid abusive persona.

“Perhaps that has something to do with it.”

He stared at me expressionless. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or himself.

What was this lunatic saying now ? To do with what ? My IQ? My IQ has something to do with why I can’t get along at WAIT? But hang on – that’s where we started with all this wasn’t it? We know why. Because the course is not intellectually challenging enough for me, right? So have we just completed an hour long round trip of a totally circular argument? And I’m paying for all this, dearly.

Unaware of his wholesale contradiction of himself O’Neil ranted on regardless.

“When I first studied psychology, I thought it was just a whole lot of bullshit. But then I came to realize…’

He was wasting his breath. I’d had enough. I was out of it. I had no idea what he was talking about. Something was very dangerous for me, and, oh…he once studied psychology, so I had better listen. Well I couldn’t have listened to anything he said after that point, and he said a lot. I lapsed into la-la land. The land of the wide awake but fast asleep.

The place you go when you can’t take any more. The spiritual sanctuary in your mind that is reserved for you and you alone when all hope is lost, all effort futile, all hope destroyed. I wasn’t listening to a word he said.

But I did notice some words he didn’t say. He had stopped using profanities. Nodding and smiling at appropriate points, I tuned in again as he concluded what must have been 15 minutes later …

“…but if there is one thing I am sure it is that we are all the same.”

Well, I could just about hear George Harrison’s sanctimonious “Isn't it a pity” playing in the background as he said it. “Isn’t it a pity, Isn’t it a shame. When not too many people can see we’re all the same”. His admiration of Harrison’s famous lyric was the most meaningful advice this pig could offer in all his 50+ years of existence. And now, finally, finally, he’s tacitly admitting the course might not be actually intellectually challenging enough for me, but that it doesn’t make any difference anyhow because “we’re all the same”.

“So now there is a place over near the Library with some knowledgeable gentlemen who will be able to give you some assistance with you career. They are the Counselling services and I suggest you go and see them, Mr Anderson. Because if there is one thing I do know, I know this. You need their help.” he concluded adamantly.

“I don’t think they can help me.” I said bluntly, without a pause or even thinking about it. I was still wondering how to lodge an appeal.

How could they possible help me appeal my Academic Status? O’Neil clearly wasn’t interested helping me do that. According to O’Neil, I needed the “Help” kind of help. It was just another thinly disguised put down.

But after his last heartfelt 15 minute condescending insult to my intelligence, my instant rejection of his advice was all too quick for O’Neil. By now realising I was no longer cooperating in his psychological abuse of me, he continued the charade acting as if all his good advice had been wasted. Insulted that I was not taking him seriously, he withdrew.

“All right. That’s your choice. But remember this. It’s your life”, he pontificated, as if I needed him to tell me that, and once again insinuating my mother was forcing me to study computing, and as if he wasn’t the very same vindictive bastard that only whatever remained of his own guilty conscience could be bothered accusing anyone else of being, and the person most guilty of stopping me from doing what I wanted to do.

He looked at me blankly with the look of a killer after the kill, of the slayer of innocence, and of the never-hath-forgiveness. I didn’t care. All I cared about was that finally, finally this satanically deranged academic had finally finally, finally, shut his damned filthy mouth. The opportunity to leave was there, and I took it.

I got up and started to leave. I felt like a dead man. But at least I was a man, unlike the unmitigated coward I had just spent the last 90 minutes with. I turned on the way out and looked at him, shaking my head faintly at him in final disbelief.

“Crazy”.

I broke eye contact with O’Neil whose blank look changed to visibly stupefied that in spite of everything he said, I still managed to ignore it all, steal the agenda back off him, and get in the last word.

I would have liked to have informed  O’Neil that my mother had always wanted me to study law, that no-one had ever encouraged me or influenced to study computing, that I was naturally attracted to it without any artificial influences whatsoever, that I was writing in assembler, Algol, Fortran and Snobol with students at the UWA University Computer Club while my peers at WAIT were still learning Basic, that my friends who were in the very literal sense “fucking around” were all passing units with big smiles on their faces while I was still a naive virgin in my first ever friendship let alone sexual relationship with a female, that I otherwise had no social life, and felt isolated and alienated at WAIT, and so on.

Of course, O’Neil could not have got it more wrong. But he didn’t care. He really, really didn’t care. He cared so little that from the get go he hijacked the meeting and made it into a 90 minute sadistic exercise in carving up a vulnerable student, just to make his point about how much he didn’t care. His sole objective was to incite me to despise him to his face by whatever legal means he could think of, or at least that didn’t involve actual physical violence. His failure to get that reaction from me only encouraged him to try harder.

Nothing this man said could be trusted. There was nothing “very dangerous” for me in taking up my right of appeal. Even if one assumes (ignoring all his admissions) he had no knowledge of the letter, then he could only have meant that it was “very dangerous” for me to agree with him that the course was not intellectually challenging enough. That’s not “very dangerous”. It’s valuable feedback for any academic staff who wants to know. And the course was stupefyingly boring. It was for that reason I had to ask the compelling question: Why was I being so alienated? Why cant I pass exams? Why cant I get along at WAIT? I had to know why.

But there was also a bigger picture here. O’Neil simply had no intention of having me exercise my right of appeal. The letter was an absolute set up for an opportunistic vindictive and cowardly assault.

God only knows why. Maybe he didn’t like me. Maybe he didn’t like intelligent people. Maybe he didn’t like Mondays. Or maybe he was the one who had the problem. Maybe it was O’Neil who needed "Help", and maybe, just maybe, it was “very dangerous” for any student to consult O’Neil for any advice whatsoever because ONiel was a “very dangerous” person.

Whatever the reason, nothing excuses the unrestrained psychological abuse and abuse of confidence of a 19 year old student by a 50+ year old paranoid thug masquerading as Acting Head of Department.

Nothing.

And as I drove home in shock, I lamented that I would have to come back again the next day and try to discuss appealing my course terminated status with someone rational.  I figured it would be an exercise in futility, but then O’Neil had given me the one thing you should never give a person.

Nothing to lose.

2.     retry

 “I’d like to see the Head of Department please”.

The Department secretary looked up at me from her desk. We had of course met across the counter window many times before in the course of administrative matters. She exuded the sort of professionalism that comes from years of dedication to a thankless job. Yet her years of experience could not hide her surprise at seeing me yet again, making the same request as the previous day.

“Didn’t I speak to you just yesterday about this?”, came the anticipated rhetorical reply. Her surprise was not the only thing I was expecting. This time I not only had the letter that started this nightmare., but I was going to use it.

“I spoke to Mr ONiel yesterday”, I complained, “and he spent over an hour shouting at me at the top of his voice refusing to provide me with the advice I this letter says I am entitled to.”

She looked down from my resolute gaze to the letter, embarrassed for the department if not the university.

“Unfortunately Mr Kelly is on leave until the start of the 2^nd semester four weeks from now. You won’t be able to see him until then. Did you want to make an appointment anyway?”

“No I do not want to make an appointment, I want to see someone right now, who is not also completely insane, and who can assist me in lodging an appeal. I have spoken to Mr O’Neil and I refuse to have anything further to do with him. I wish to speak to someone else other than John O’Neil about lodging an appeal”.

Unlike John ONiel, the secretary was acutely smart. Smart enough to know that not all the people occupying the corridors of universities shared the altruistic attitudes of their co-workers such as herself.

 “Let me see if Don McIntyre is in today. He might be willing to see you.”

Mobilised into action she picked up the handset from the PABX and rang McIntyre’s extension.

“Oh, hi Don. I’ve got a student here who wants to discuss an appeal against his course terminated status but he doesn’t want to see John ONiel. Can you speak with him please? Oh great, I’ll send him down now.”

She looked up as if already knowing it was the last time we would ever see each other, and wishing me Godspeed.

“Mr McIntyre is just past Mr ONiel’s office on the left.”

Don McIntyre was a short older man seemingly overdue for retirement. Usually sporting a bow-tie, he had the demeanour of a burnt out relic of the 1950’s. Polite, pleasant and well presented, McIntyre was everything John O’Neil wasn’t.

As I walked towards McIntyre’s office, who should appear emerging from a few doors down the corridor but O’Neil. I stopped well away from him. He looked straight at me, gaping, like the incompetent killer out of a horror movie when he discovers the victim isn’t dead. I stood there and left him navigate back to his own office. Thinking I had come to see him again he paused at the door. But I was too far away for him to start a conversation. I just watched him creep back into his hole and eventually shut the door.

I ventured down to McIntyre’s office.

“Mr McIntyre?”.

 “Yes” came the high pitched elderly reply as he looked up from his desk. Like O’Neil, he chose to have the desk between himself and visitors.

I remained standing. This time, there would be no doubt why I was there. Quite and innocuous, I started pouring out my indignation into his tidy little academic world like an unstoppable tsunami.

“I’d like to discuss how to appeal against my course terminated status.”

I had expected some resistance from McIntyre, if only because he most likely overheard most of O’Neil’s tirade the previous day, and he would therefore be even less interested in becoming a party to any of this.

“Oh, well Mr O’Neil is dealing with appeals, he’s just next door” he immediately replied, dismissively.

His spontaneous response was like a reflex – and it already gave too much away. It was clear McIntyre wouldn’t discuss the letter with me. He wasn’t going to pretend either that he didn’t know it was me O’Neil had torn to shreds the previous day.

 “Yes I spoke with Mr O’Neil yesterday and I’m not happy with the treatment he showed me, and I need to discuss this with someone else”.

“Yes but Mr O’Neil is the one dealing with appeals. I don’t have the authority to make those decisions”.

“I’m not discussing anything with O’Neil. This letter doesn’t even has his name on it. I want to discuss an appeal with someone other than John O’Neil.”

McIntyre was already uneasy.

“Let me see the letter.” 

“Yes it says here you should see the Head of Department. If you want to make an appointment to see Mr Kelly then you need to speak to the receptionist.” He handed back the letter.

“Mr Kelly is on leave.” I replied.

“I see. Oh well then, you will need to speak with Mr O’Neil. He is acting Head of Department at the moment”, came the reply, conveniently completing the round trip of his circular logic. But I was ready for him. I reiterated more adamantly my right, pushing him straight back out of his pedantic comfort zone into the surge of my outrage.

“I’ve spoken to Mr O’Neil and I refuse to have anything further to do with him. I wish to speak to someone else other than John O’Neil about lodging an appeal”.

McIntyre repeatedly pointed out that O’Neil was the person I needed to talk to.

It was a lie and we both knew it. Students were told constantly by academic staff that the “door was always open” and to feel free to discuss any matters with the academic staff at any time. It was the only reason I even trusted enough to open up to O’Neil to start with.

As much as McIntyre would try, I insisted again and again that I was not prepared to speak to O’Neil about this matter. By now tiring, and out of his depth, McIntyre condescendingly asked if I minded if he spoke to O’Neil for a minute. I just looked at him.

He left the room, and a short time late McIntyre re-appeared with O’Neil in tow.

“I am not talking to him”, I insisted.

“But Mr Anderson I don’t have authority to deal with this matter”, McIntyre pleaded. “Mr O’Neil is the only person able to discuss this with you”.

“Fine. You discuss as much as you want with him but I am not having anything to do with him. I have come here to seek advice on how to go about lodging an appeal against my course terminated status. I spoke to this man yesterday who spent over an hour shouting and screaming at me in a voice so loud it could be heard to the other end of the corridor. I am not speaking to this man again. I have a letter here from the university inviting me to contact the Head of Department regarding submitting an appeal and I expect to speak to somebody rational about how to lodge an...”

O’Neil, cut in. “Show me the letter” his arm reaching out to me, and as if he had no idea what I was talking about. I ignored him, still facing McIntyre as if no one was there. O’Neil was kidding himself.

“Show me the letter” he insisted a second time, extending his reach.

Silence.

McIntyre saw an opportunity and rushed in …

“Can I see the letter?”

He had already seen it. But I handed the letter to McIntyre anyway as if I didn’t know what he was going to do with it. He handed it to O’Neil without even looking at it.

O’Neil studied the standard Course Terminated circular as if he didn’t know what it said, as if he had never even “counselled” course terminated students let alone ones wanting to tell him how much they knew. O’Neil started talking to me about the letter.

“Mr Anderson I discussed this with you yesterday and...”

But I was adamant and interrupted him. “Mr McIntyre, I am not discussing this matter with Mr O’Neil”.

O’Neil turned to McIntyre.

“Mr Anderson came in yesterday and I discussed this with him. I advised him to get assistance from Counselling Services, but he has apparently decided not to do that. So there is nothing more we can do for him.”

He then turned and looked at me, as he said “Mr Anderson doesn’t know what he wants to do”.

I thought ”What bullshit. This guy just doesn’t quit with his lies.” O’Neil figured that was the end of it. 

“Mr McIntyre, I am entitled to discuss the matter of appealing my course termination with the Head of Department, and I expected to do so now. If you are not interested in discussing with me how to lodge an appeal, then I’ll take it up with someone who will.”  

“Mr Anderson, as Mr O’Neil has pointed out you have discussed this with him already and unfortunately there is nothing further he can do and I really don’t see the point in discussing it with me.“

“I am entitled to discuss the matter of appealing my course termination.”

“But Mr Anderson, I have just told you…”

“Mr McIntyre, If you are not interested in discussing this matter, then kindly tell me who will.”  

“Mr O’Neil is the person handling appeals…”

“I am not discussing anything with that man. Tell me who I must see.”

“Mr O’Neil …”

“Who I must see?”

“I am not able to discuss this with you…”

“Then tell me who is.”

This played out for at least a dozen more exchanges, as I hammered home the same point, each time more adamantly and determined than the last. McIntyre, now perspiring and shaking, was finding the experience exhausting. He couldn’t maintain the sham and it showed.

Yet in spite of this, O’Neil just stood there, smiling, unmoved at the threat of any ramifications of his total dereliction of duty of care and complete indifference to McIntyre’s distress. He seemed amused, as if I was still just playing some kind of clever game, still trying to prove how smart I was, still trying to hypnotise him.

When I felt I had suitably impressed McIntyre with my contempt for the hypocrisy of the Department’s blatant refusal to honour the appeal process, I ended the discussion. I looked at O’Neil still smiling at me, appearing entertained and bemused. But what O’Neil thought didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to be intimidated by O’Neil. And I wasn’t. That is all that mattered.

Having obtained at least some satisfaction, I reclaimed the letter from McIntyre.

And having coerced O’Neil into proudly standing there once again looking like the vindictive bastard he truly was I made sure he got the message that I had come to deliver.

“You cater for the average, not the exceptional.”. 

With their denial of my right to appeal now patently and undeniably obvious, I calmly left, with them standing there, smiling, and just kidding themselves that there would not be ramifications.

---

[1] Dean Elsner formed Alpha Soft, a computer software company, as a way of raising money for the UWA Computer Club and which sold utilities such as PDP 11 disk readers and IBM floppy disk readers. Alpha Soft raised about $1,000 a year for the club in the late 1970’s. (See http://www.ucc.asn.au/aboutucc/histmain.ucc)