Hey obnoxious douchebags, you may think you have somewhere more important to be than in class, but at least when you are in class during the scheduled time, please refrain from any of these things that disrupt and show disrespect to your peers and professors:
—If a class is scheduled to end at 1:30, don’t start packing up at 1:25 and earlier, especially when the professor is still professing. It’s so rude. You make so much noise fucking around for your bookbag and zippin’ shit up that it disrupts everyone around you. Plus, you look like you don’t value the information that is being told to you, which is usually important. Wait until the professor has ENDED class.
—Turn off your fuckin’ cellphones and don’t text in class. Profs can see everything you are doing while they’re in front of you, you are being rude. On that same note, if you are in an elevated classroom (ie, an arena style) don’t surf the web, everyone behind you can see it, and believe it or not, ARE DISTRACTED BY IT, and are not listening because of it.
—When you are given back a marked assignment/essay/lab, don’t read it in class in front of your professor. THiS is not so much rude but a matter of etiquette. You should take your marked work away and read over it thoroughly before you confront your professor about your grade. If it’s a bad grade, give it a little while before you speak to your professor, and read your work closely bcuz you probably deserved exactly what you got, and you should realize that before you speak to your professor about it. You should also be calm when you do so.
—DON’T EAT FUCKING SUBWAY SANDWICHES IN A LECTURE! Or any loud (crinkly paper, crunchy apples) or strong-smelling foods in the middle of a class. Does this one even need explanation?
University might be a marketplace and you are a consumer, but it is also an environment of higher education, and there are people in your community who are very serious about what they do. Stop being a rude and obnoxious student. If you’re that bored in class, stay the fuck home or drop out, don’t ruin it for the people who actually give a shit about what is going on and respect the time and knowledge of their professors. —Waste Your Own Time, Not Everyone Else’s
This article appears in Mar 25-31, 2010.
WOW – You just described just about everyone these days…
Amen!
don’t ya’all just love uni. life. jesus people, just jump up, tell them to shut the hell up, then sit back down. they will get the picture. i did that once when i was at dal., the looks on their stupid little miscreant faces was worth a million bucks. too bad they didn’t have vid cams or cels back then. and when i actually taught there for a year and a half, they knew fucking better than to peep. it was an automatic failing grade. i have zero tolerance for assholes like that. and it seems the more money the family has, the more obstinately stupid they are. just make yourself heard next time, o.p., you will be respected for it, not by them, but the rest.
you’re a annoying keener aren’t you; good luck with that
I had a classmate who used to knit. I wanted to take those sticks and put one in each of her stupid eyes.
lol university.. what a waste of everything. And don’t act like professors are gods, all they do is read shit out of a book, respect my ass.
Kay, I haven’t read the actual bitch past the first sentence, nore have I read the comments but:
KEEENNNER!
I agree with most of this bitch, but I concur that OP’s probably an ass kissing keener.
I disagree about reading your paper/mark in front of your prof. The “cooling off period” is fine (I’ve had profs who wouldn’t talk about anyone’s marks for at least 24 hours after he handed the assignments/tests back), but why’s is not proper “etiquette” to look at your grade when you get it back in class?
As per the eating: some of us *have* to eat in class. My long lasting insulin peaks during one of my classes and I have to have something carby to eat or I’ll go into hypoglycemia, which can cause brain damage, coma and even death. Granted, I don’t tend to eat noisy things in class because I’ll bring a sandwich from home in a container, but still. My profs know my situation and have no issues with it.
Agreed, the OP sounds like a major pretentious kiss-ass keener. Did you get beaten up a lot in high school, by any chance? On the other hand, OP may be a prof themselves.
Then again, reading through this list, I realized that I was guilty of most things mentioned here. Sorry!
Even if she is or isn’t a ‘keener’, people like qpmzwonxeibcruv (you’re name says a lot as it is) are the ones missing the point. It’s about respect. The class room is just an one example of how out to lunch people can be socially. Get a clue and start putting a little more thought into what you doing.
OP is absolutely correct.
University costs a great deal of money, and students are expected to act like grown-ups while in class. Some people really DO want to be there, as they plan on using their studies to improve their own lives and the lives of others. (Think about who you are calling “keeners” the next time you go to the doctor or drive over a bridge.)
Students and profs have every right to tell the “little kids” to act appropriately or leave. If the bored little kiddies would rather chat or check FaceBook, they are FREE to do so—OUTSIDE OF CLASS.
University is not mandatory like high school. It is an expensive VOLUNTARY activity, and the people who are serious about it don’t need to put up with ANY bullshit from kids who are just there to waste time (or waste their parents’ money.)
I never had any problem telling people to shut up in a lecture hall—they were interfering with the use of MY valuable time and money! $50,000+ ? —you bet I take it seriously.
Plus, if I CHOOSE to pay someone $50.00 per hour out of my own pocket to teach me about a subject, that they spent 10-20 YEARS of their life studying, you damned well better believe that I am going to listen VERY RESPECTFULLY to what that person has to say.
Yum, Subway. Now I am hungry.
Wait, are you guys fucking serious? If you’re so educated and pretentious, then why don’t you know how to PAY ATTENTION? How is what I’m doing relevant to your attention span? If I’m looking at crackbook, so what? Am I forcing your neck to turn to the left and downwards to look at my screen? Fuck no! If I’m texting my friend about the hot girl two rows down, how does that take away from you reading notes off a powerpoint and writing them down. More so, (and this is esepcially true at Dal) all of the classroom resources are Web -fucking – CT. Missed the notes? Guess what, they are going to be posted on the internet! OMGAHHH!
Seriously, I get that you want to learn, but the fact that I don’t and am only sitting here to get my B, get my diplomma and get out isn’t going to stop your overachieving ass from trying to pull off your 3.5 GPA. What is going to happen in the real world when your sitting at work and some fuck face is making noise beside you? Gonna get all pretentious on his ass? We’ll see how that works for you when your the office bitch, and people are peeing in your coffee.
soo let me get this straight, just because someone in interested in a subject and wants to learn and not be distracted or because they think its rude for someone to sit in a class and ignore what the proff is teaching and distract others displaing total disrespect for everyone else around them they are an Ass Kissing Keener??
You guys are fucking pathetic!!
i’m with ruby jane/frenchie/op…have some respect instead of the usual self entitlement. nothing wrong with being keen better than cunty
It’s not about pretension, or pretending to be anything. And it’s not about being a bitch to random people for no reason.
No one is saying that you can’t open a textbook or turn the pages or organize your notes like a normal person would.
It’s about having to put up with all the “pss pss pss giggle giggle giggle sigh sigh scoff scoff crinkle crinkle chat chat” shit—often directly behind you— from the dorks who really don’t want to be there AT ALL and who can’t make a basic decision for themselves to go off and do something that DOES interest them.
Part of the glory of being an adult is YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO SIT IN A CLASS WHEN YOU’D RATHER BE SOMEWHERE ELSE.
I make no apologies for expecting adult students to act like adults during class time. If I take a class, I am a paying customer, and I am there to participate.
And if I’m TEACHING the class, high-school behavior gets noted, commented on, and, yes, sometimes, kicked out.
The intent is to create a PLEASANT atmosphere for the rest of those who WANT to be there, in hopes of LEARNING something.
This bitch sounds like it’s about one of those massive first year courses like Physics 101, or intro to psych that has 200 hopeful young faces in it…don’t worry OP, half of them will be gone and by next year, classes will be smaller…and if it’s calculus, most will fail anyway…
😉
Oooh, Frosty, how I LOVE those “weeding out” classes!!!
: )
Now I’m nostalgic for my first year Biology class at a large western-Canadian university—we had 800 students in the lecture hall the first few weeks . . . it was fun to watch it dwindle down to a cozy 350 as the year went on.
Our prof mentioned that the grade distribution would pretty much follow the seating selection. As an occassional instructor myself I have found this to have an element of truth.
I’ve also noticed that the people who obessess the most about what the “keeners” are doing are those whose parents are paying the bill.
You can always spot the students who have to pay for the tuition themselves, or who have to earn high grades to get into the professional school of their choice.
I wholeheartedly agree with most of the OB. I do, at least in my experience, think that it sucks when profs make attendance part of your grade. I think it sucks for a number of reasons – in relation to this bitch it sucks because you end up with people coming to class who ordinarily would not. It also sucks because not everyone needs/wants to go to class to learn. For some classes you can just as easily read the material, do the assignments, write the papers, and take the exams.
In relation to attendance, I think sometimes profs either forget (or disregard) the fact that we actually paid to be there (or not be there, as the case may be), people have different learning styles and preferences, and they should be graded on what they know, not how they managed to learn it.
I’m sure I was guilty of going to some classes because of an attendance requirement, but working on other courses while I’m there.
Oddly enough, now working in a corporate environment, I see more of this going on than not – CEOs and Presidents of companies attending meetings, all the while sitting with the Blackberries and computers furiously attending to other work. But I guess that might be another bitch for another day…
People are disrespectful and you have ADD, bad combo.
Thing *is* part of life and being a “grown up” is dealing with things and people we don’t like. Sure people on FB and people texting is rude as fuck when you’re in class, but it’s not like you can control it — so why bother bitching about it? If you don’t like it, switch seats. And you’re not going to be able to control who eats and who doesn’t eat in class — so why stress yourself out by worrying about what others are doing? Take it as an opportunity to developing coping skills for when you’re out there in the real world.
I just don’t see how anything in this bitch would affect OP if he/she’s a student — except the food part. I’ve seen LOTS of people on msn/facebook/internet/playing games ffs in my time in university (esp. at Acadia) and it never distracted me once and I have the attention span/concentration of an ant. Also, texting, while rude, doesn’t affect me personally. Like I said, I agree with most of this bitch, but getting all upset over shit you can’t control usually comes from some of the more annoying keeners in class — the ones who seemingly have all the answers to all the questions who usually ask questions they know the answers to just so they can impress the prof/classmates. THOSE are the real annoying people. You just want to yell at them “WHY ARE YOU EVEN IN THIS CLASS IF YOU KNOW EVERYTHING ALREADY?”
I think the main problem, as mentioned above, are those fucking attendance marks. I don’t need to go to class to do well and it generally pisses off the attendance whores I know in my classes when we get assignments and tests back and I do better than they do. I’ve maintained a 3.8 GPA in my current program and a 3.5 in my last and it’s really an understatement that I’ve had some attendance issues (I go to the majority of classes, but I’ll miss 4 or 5 over the term — though last year I went to half an OB lecture an just went to the labs and still got an A-), so I must be doing SOMETHING right, because if I didn’t check myself, I’d be that annoying POS who knew everything in class.
My point? Not all those who don’t have perfect attendance are slackers; some of us work just as hard and do just as well, if not better than you. Without being a busy body keener who’s more concerned with what everyone else is doing than themselves. University classes are public domain, kind of like mass transit — it’s not your personal chauffeur service and university is not there to cater to your individual needs. Any prof can have hundreds of students at any one time, so you’re not that special.
The point of keeping attendance records is not that you need to be there to “learn” the material. Most uni courses at the undergraduate level can be completed using the reading material, doing the assigments, writing the exams, showing up on quiz days etc etc.
Attending the lectures, at least most of the time, simply shows that you can muster up the self-contol to drag yourself out of your warm little bed of a winter’s morning, hung over from yet another student night at the Purple Moose and Cock, and actually show up…
…because out in the big ole mean real world, showng up counts for something…
People that complete their degrees by skipping classes are also skipping half the point of being there…
OK—I’ll grant you that some—OK too many—profs are dreadfully dull and can totally kill a person’s interest in a subject matter they thought they would love. This is a tragedyd. (I aspire to do better than that because I CARE that my students are paying dearly for my time and expertise.)
That aside, it is ALSO true that almost any basic item of fact can be easily looked up in a book or on the internet; you don’t need to go to a class to gain knowledge about a topic. In fact, one could theoretically get a rich and complete education for free at the public library. MANY people DO become self-educated in this way, without ever setting foot on a college campus.
The value of the lectures, however—or what SHOULD be the value of the lectures—is that a *good* prof can guide you through material that may be overwhelming to a beginner. (Imagine: “Here’s your 1000-page Chem 101 book: get to it!” “Uh oh . . .” ) A prof should set the pace for you, so you know what you need to understand first, before moving on the more complicated things.
He or she should also be providing relevant, challenging complimentary —or even contradictory—readings so that the students understand that knowledge is always evolving and changing, that most of it does not stay written in stone for long.
A *good* instructor should use lecture time to point out, highlight or pinpoint some of the very important ideas and principles BEHIND just the factual “trivia points.” WHY is it important to know something? HOW does it affect your life and future career? WHY should you care to delve deeper into this topic, rather than just moving on? HOW was this amazing piece of knowledge discovered?
A good instructor should also aim to help students become inspired about learning. He or she should push them to exceed what they think they can do, to become better at something than they were before they started. He or she should ultimately assist them in becoming competent, confident, self-motivated learners—for life.
Many students don’t realize that a crucial part of learning is having the opportunity to spend time with PEOPLE who are experts in certain subjects, people who have spent decades working on certain areas of research, because they love it, the obsess about it, and they want other people to find it as interesting as they do.
One of my very favourite professors of all time was a wise, kind, wonderful older man who was a joy to study with. Just being AROUND him was an education in itself.
Yes, he “imparted knowledge” that I could have easily found in books, but he loved his subject matter so much, and was so good at what he did, that he continues to be an inspiration in my career to this day—almost 15 years after my last course with him.
I consider his course (and knowledge) the keystone to my entire career: undergraduate studies, post-graduate studies, and professional life. He more than made up for those “duds” that we all suffer through once in a while.
So my advice to all first-years is SHOW UP! Every opportunity you can, just GO and BE THERE. (And, of course, listen.) You really never know when a prof might say that ONE THING that changes EVERYTHING for you.
I have one prof who actually encourages us to skip class if necessary — he calls it “time management” and says sometimes you just gotta miss class to get shit done.
I have to admit, though, after one of my classes today I have a whole new take on this bitch. In the middle of a TEST this annoying as shit orange-over-fake-tanned-butterface ANSWERED A TEXT ON HER BLACKBERRY! She set her phone on vibrate (and of course the entire class could hear it because she left it on the desk), got like three texts and picked up the blackberry and answered the text WHILE SHE WAS WRITING A TEST.
I don’t know what was more maddening: the annoying vibrating racket, or the prof not kicking her ass out. Ugh. Who does that?
I decided then that if I was ever a prof and any of my students were texting in class or on their laptops on FB or MSN I’d kick their asses out — I had a prof last term who’d do that (she put it on her syllabus). And if a phone rang during a test (including text notification beeps or any vibrating phone that I could hear) I’d kick the phone’s owner out and give them a zero on the test.
In my opinion, attendance is not all that necessary and not even the biggest part of going to university. To me, the biggest part is learning the material, which you can do just fine without having to go to class. All the professor is doing, more or less, is trying to explain to you what you just read in an hour or so. And then maybe add some extra bits.
I had a prof in my first year who actually suggested we don’t even take notes in her class and that the only point to coming to class was if you wanted to have a discussion. She said that her notes would not cover the entirety of what would appear on exams, so there would be no point. I got an A or an A- in that class, I think. However, in an intro class in that year, I had to go because I didn’t buy the book (since it was $150+), so I HAD to go to class. This time, notes actually proved beneficial as I somehow pulled off an A.
As for eating in class, I have no issue with that. I couldn’t care less if they pulled out a grill and started frying something up. Why? Because not all of us have time to eat in between classes. Some of us work two jobs while being a full-time student, so it leaves us with little to no room to eat, and sometimes eating has to be done in class. Be it a subway sandwich or whatever. I mostly, if anything, bring a sandwich I made at home or a bag of carrots or something. The rare time I’ll have like a bagel or muffin or sandwich in crinkly paper. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who has a problem with it can go to hell — as much as the three seconds of paper-crinkling may be annoying, I won’t be able to pay attention in class if all I’m thinking about is how starving I am. So, TFB?
Also, maybe you have attention problems yourself if you’re getting distracted by what others are doing on their computers. Unless they’re doing something really heinous, it’s not that distracting to me. I bring my laptop all the time and, yes, check Facebook or my e-mail occasionally. Hell, often times I’m even chatting on MSN. Surprisingly, I still manage to listen to my professor and take notes. But, to my credit, I do attempt to sit at the backs of classrooms so that people aren’t staring at my screen and are thusly distracted (if they would be).
As for the phone thing, I find it absolutely unbelievable when people forget to turn off their volume. However, it’s not the end of the world if it goes off. I don’t think the professor has the right to kick you out because of what you’re doing with your class time, though. You are the one paying for it (if it’s a loan, you’ll be paying for it soon enough… with interest), so it’s your choice on how to make use of that time, in my opinion. That doesn’t mean that you should be standing up on the table, shouting at the top of your lungs just because “it’s your money”, but that a harmless text in the middle of class isn’t the end of the world.
But, in the end, there are a lot of dumbasses in university. I, too, love classes that weed out the incompetent.
Oh, also, as for the comment about reviewing your work in class… what the hell are you talking about? Haha. Every professor I’ve ever had has always gone over graded material right after they handed it back in the first place, so it’s sort of hard to avoid doing that. Not to mention, when has it EVER been a part of university etiquette to not check your work out right after you get it back? Furthermore, what is wrong with that? I can understand it being a bit inappropriate for someone to suddenly stand up and shout about getting a shitty mark, but I’ve never seen anyone do that and from what I can tell, that’s not what your issue is. Some people don’t understand why they got what they got, especially if they were under the impression that they were doing it correctly in the first place.
Jesus, I took a class once where I talked on MSN almost the entire class, yet *still* managed to take pages of typed notes that people begged me to send to them. It’s called “multi tasking.” Some of us are really good at it.
I’ve also had classes where I read the book and studied entirely off that and got great marks in the course. I’m currently taking an online course, and despite the lecture powerpoints being posted, I haven’t looked at them once — I read the chapters and ended up with a mark 15 points higher than the class average.
I think what people need to remember is, not everyone has the same learning style, or method of doing things, and just because someone isn’t attending every class or getting their assignments done a month in advance, it doesn’t mean they aren’t doing well (even better than you, in some instances). Like I said — I’ve pissed people off with the types of marks I get with my attendance and time management which may appear to some as lacking. But hay, works for me!