There's ALWAYS One!
 

Today was my first day back to school since I graduated from University 2 years ago. And I was reminded right away of one of my BIGGEST pet peeves. There's ALWAYS one person in the class who does not shut up. And I'm not talking about someone talking to the person beside them. I'm talking about the person who speaks up while the professor is talking, ALWAYS ALWAYS has their hands up and never has anything really valuable to say. Is it just me who has been fortunate enough to have at least one of these people in every class I've ever had???

Example: I am in a program that only has about 50 students. The other week we had an orientation and we were allowed to ask questions. Well this guy (who is probably in his low to mid 40s) raises his hand and asks if our schedules are going to change or if we're going to have fridays off all year. So our professor says 'you will have this schedule all year' to which this man responds with a whole diatribe about how wonderful it is becaue then when he has his daughter every other weekend he can have her a day early...and on and on he went. Why would he think any of us need to hear his life story? We don't even know the guy yet.

And then today in class, this same guy kept cutting off the professors while they spoke and screamed out what he thought would be the last word of every sentence. His hand was up the whole time and he kept asking brilliant questions like 'do we need to read the newspaper?' while in our Current Events in Journalism class. Everyone in the class is annoyed by him. And today was only the first day! It's going to be a loooooooooong two years.

There's always one! Please tell me I'm not the only one.

Welll sorrreeeee. I will keep coments to myself. Just trying to start some discusion. Geez.

You said he's an older gentleman. Sounds like he's just excited to be back at school to me. I'm sure he'll run out of steam soon! Meanwhile, good luck!

gphi- I FEEL YOUR PAIN!

Just started law school last week. Already have determined who the class idiot and the class ass are in my section (law classes are broken down into sections, it's hard to describe how it works, but our smallest section breakdown is about 27 people).

Anyway, the class idiot is the one who's just absurdly annoying. Doesn't really talk in class, but afterwards, etc.

The class ass is the hand-rasier. He's in his upper 20's and is just insanely annoying and tries to act smart, always trying to interject. Thankfully a couple profs have shot him down already. I think in his case it's some lack of social skills because he does other things that just suck! In our first class of the morning, most people get there a little early to look over their outlines, etc. He turns on his MP3s everyday on his laptop. Now, not softly, so only he can hear them. Nope, full blast. And it's HORRIBLE music. Some Marvin Gaye imitation music. Just crap. Everyone stares at him! No one's spoken up yet cause they don't want to ruffle anyone's feathers, but I will tomorrow if he does it again. Just so rude- one day I was the only one there so I had on my MP3s. He walks in, and as a courtesy I turn off my music. A few more kids come then he turns on his! ARGH!

Sorry.... had to rant....

Anyway, I do find that a lot of times it is older students who speak up a lot... maybe they are excited to be back in school, but in my undergrad experience it never got any better as the semester went on.

There is always one of those types in every class, and the teacher usually finds them just as annoying as the students do I've noticed!

My husband has been doing some of his Masters work by distance learning. Sometimes if I'm bored I sit down and watch tapes with him. On the tapes you can see the professor but only hear the students in the class. During this one class he was taking there was always this kid named Jon that asked all kinds of questions and kept the class late.

So anyway, we are up at his fraternity house over one weekend and he starts talking about this class and his friend was like "I'm in that class." My husband asks him who this Jon guy was and it turned out to be his friend! Most of these guys call each other by their last name so it never occurred to my husband that it was somebody that he knew.

My husband told him to save the questions for AFTER class...when the tape was DONE rolling.

I just started law school too, and there is one in my section, too. This girl was a philosophy major, and is apparently very impressed with herself. She LOVES to talk, even though the professors basically tell her she's an idiot, but in that wonderful, obfuscated way that attorneys do so.

She still hasn't gotten the point, even though the professors are pretty much making fun of her to her face!

I feel bad for her, but she should know by now, that speaking up to show off is just stupid. She'll bring up issues that have nothing to do with anything, just to ask a question.

As if I didn't hate law school enough, I've gotta deal with *this*

Hee hee :o, I used to be a similar breed. The class clown. I used to say stuff in class and meetings not to sound smart like those people, but to sound dumb. People would crack up, but wouldn't take me seriously when I wanted to be serious. So,
I slowed down.

There was a guy in a lot of my classes who had the loudest most obnoxious voice, and he would just spout out questions or comments in class if the prof didn't notice he had his hand up. usually it was a question about something he wasn't paying attention about, or a day he missed because he skipped class to be with his ugly wife. i know i shouldn't bring her into this, but anyone who would marry this guy deserves it!

There was another guy that always tried to prove people wrong during presentations, to make them look bad. how this could be to his advangage, i have no idea. actually, there were 3 of these guys, and for senior design, they were in one group. i wanted to plant a bomb in their project...

My favorite is when the said annoying person is very obviously not listening to anything that is going on because they're too busy thinking of the next brilliant inspired question to ask, and then *light bulb* they come up with a brilliant question, raise their hand and ask the question that the professor just spent 20 minutes explaining to the person who asked right before the guy who wasn't listening asked it. This has happened in my classes many many times. And usually the professor is way way too nice and just says 'well, as i just said...' and then gives a three minute short form of his earlier 20 minute response :mad:.

Be rude to them or don't give them any attention at all.

LOL -- too funny! My favorite from law school was the guy who would sit at the front of the room and ask long, obnoxious questions relevant only to himself and the free legal advice he would try to obtain from the professor during class.

Unfortunately for those of you in law school, the profession is full of people with no social skills and large egos. Welcome to it! ;)

Well sweety, I'm almost there.

*smooches*:D



:cool:

BlazerCheer will surely kill this payaso in her Bio for Majors class before the semester is over. If the professor doesn't beat her to it.

Pensé payasos hacen a gente feliz.

try having the guy in your class who not only asks a question every other minute, he leans over 2 seats so that he can copy your notes becasue he's so busy asking questions he doesn't have time to take the notes....that's the worst kind.

En esa clase, no! El payaso habla y habla y de veras, los estudiantes y el profesor van a matarlo.

Entiendo. Cada persona ha tenido un profesor a que no podrían tolerar.

Suddenly GC has become Spanish Chat! :p

No comprende. No tengo clases de espanoles en dos anos.

Votre préférerait le français?

Is that Spainish, Porteguese or Italian? I'm asking if it is any of those languages not which one.

Yes it is one of those.

Va bene, io posso giocar in questo partido. Preferisco l'italiano sopra lo spagnolo. L'italiano e' la lingua piu' bella nel mondo. Ogni conversazione e' como una canzone, e le parole ballano sull'aire alla musica della lingua.

LOL! :)

One of my most interesting classes when I was in school was a political science course that focused on the Middle East and the ongoing conflicts that stemmed from religion. The teacher was an American woman who had lived there for a number of years, and we had many religious discussions in our class.

There was one guy, probably around 32 years old, who felt the need to interject as often as possible whenever we would start debating. He loved to argue the least popular side of the issue, and would get so frustrated with the rest of us for not agreeing with him that he would actually start crying in class sometimes. :eek:

There's nothing more annoying than being unable to hear your professor's lecture because of a grown man sniffling loudly in the seat behind you. :rolleyes:

Il suono spagnolo troppo gradisce l'italiano.

Spaghetti ravioli ziti lasagna pizza mama mia!

Back on topic...
 

I took a class once where the professor had us critique each other's papers. He made photocopies of everyone's paper and covered up the names so that we wouldn't know whose we were reading. There was this one really weird guy in the class who commented on every single paper and usually gave them negative reviews. Then, when we got to his (you could tell which one was his because it was completely crazy), he went on and on about how brilliant the author is and how this was the only paper in the class that showed imagination, etc. It was one of the most ridiculous things I have ever witnessed. We also had a writing assistant for the class who would go over our papers with us, and she said that when he showed up for his meeting, he snatched his out of her hand and said that he didn't need any help because "the class said it was brilliant." :rolleyes:

Ohhhh, of course I didn't mean you! ;)

Argh. I think I have one of "those" in one of my Spanish I classes. She has to argue every bit of grammar. Like, "Why do they have masculine and feminine nouns? We don't so they shouldn't!" Or, "It's stupid for them to put their adjectives after the nouns! Will you take off if I don't?" (No, we'll just rewrite the Spanish language for you, dear.)

There's a boy who sits behind her who is already pretending to hit her over the head or throttle her when she starts to talk.:rolleyes:

Je pense que vous voulez dire "vous", pas "votre"

Oui, j'ai détesté le français dans l'université ainsi je n'ai jamais pris un intrest en l'apprenant correctement.

There's one everywhere...
 

Freshman year I had a media class, and there was this one older lady in the class that we named the 'Class Ass.' In out freshman filled lecture hall she made it a point to refute everything the professor said, and question his abilities. She always interjected, and for some reason worked some aspect of her life into a simple class question. She even went on and on about her job when the professor asked a RHETORICAL question.
Over the semester the annoyance of the class grew to hostility. By the end of the semester people were grumbling loudly, whereas before it was simple muttering under our breaths.
Once she argued endlessly with a FRESHMAN during our last class before finals. The professor was doing a review, old broad kept asking questions, and making comments. Finally, this girl was beyond irritated and said "Lady, if you don't shut the hell up..." a little too loud.
IT WAS PURE COMEDY!

It was also funny that the older woman looked at sounded like Miss Cleo.

There was one girl in a class I took over the summer that at the beginning of the class just drove me NUTS. This girl would sit directly in front of the professor and ask a number of really really stupid questions.

My friends and I got tired of it, so we started sitting in the front sits instead, lol. We also decided to be more vocal, within limits. The rules:

Don't ask questions 5-10 minutes before the end of class

Don't ask questions after receiving an assignment back that applies only to YOUR paper- that's why the teacher gives us an email address

That was really enough to keep us happy. After a couple of classes she shut up.

LOL. D'accord. Je comprend.

I'm all for getting involved in class..but..as all of you noted..there are some that take it overboard. There was this one pre-freshman in my Govt. summer class this year..well..of course after stating -repeatedly- he was going to attend Perdue University this fall and majoring in Political Science we all figured he was pretty cocky. Well, he asked irrevelent questions over EVERYTHING...and of course..would interrupt the professor during the lecture. Well, one day we were talking about different political systems when he just hopped on this soapbox saying how 'communism' wasn't that bad (please mind there were foreign students from Russia and former Soviet countries sitting right beside him) and that countries like England should be happy we 'saved' them in WW2 (also we had an English student in there also). Thankfully we all banded together and ripped him a new one after that..teehee :)