College Classroom Etiquette

Unfortunately, I think those who read this aren't part of the morons who I want to read this. However, for the sake of getting this out there, and for the sake of venting a little bit, I want to go over two vital rules for classroom etiquette in regards to college courses.

1) If you're going to be late for class, that's fine. Things happen - traffic, obligations, free food that you have to eat because it might go to waste, etc. However... If you're going to be over 15 minutes late to a course, you better have a damn good reason. For one, your lateness is a direct form of disrespect to the professor. Perhaps my view of this is skewed, but in my opinion, if you're going to be that late, the professor may just consider it more polite for you to abstain from attending class. Your late arrival can potentially disrupt the class, and regardless of your reasons, the first thing that occurs to me (and probably to the professor) is that you simply don't care that you're late. You don't think you'll miss anything important, and besides, it's a boring class anyways, right? Well if you think it's so god damn boring, then just don't come at all! Not only do you interrupt the lecture that is being taught, or the workshop taking place, but you have no idea what is going on, so you are tempted to ask questions... Unfortunately, many of you give in to that temptation, and ask questions that had been covered in the 15-45 minutes that you weren't there. Which leads me to my next point.

2) I don't mind stupidity. All right, maybe I do have a little bit of a bias... I hate stupid people. But it's not really stupid people that bother me; a stupid person can still have the sense to know that they lack some important piece of intellect. It is unforgivable, however, to flaunt your stupidity. Let's take an example from my Economics of Regulation class earlier today. As we were re-learning calculus in regards to profit maximization and monopolies, a red-haired, mid to late 20's gentleman had a slight spark in his head. He didn't know what we were doing, and he didn't have a clue as to what our lecture related to. In a 400 level Economics class, he didn't know what a tangent was. What's the problem there, you ask? I might have forgiven his stupidity, but he decided to let the whole class know. "Umm... What's a tangent?" ... So for the next ten minutes, our professor had to go over what tangents were, using such simplified imagery that I believe a 10 year old would have understood. Now, to relate this to classroom etiquette: I didn't know everything that was going on; I took Business Calculus four years ago, and Intermediate Microeconomics three and a half years ago. But - and this is what you need to understand - in this class, an upper-level Economics course - we are expected to know this. If the red-haired gentleman that I'm talking about had thought about this, he might have kept his stupidity to himself. He might have understood that by asking such a stupid question would delay the other 15 students who were trying to comprehend the symmetric cournot equilibrium. The correct course of action (and the polite/intelligent course) would be to either speak to the professor after class, therefore saving the majority of us from listening to his stupidity, and wasting our time, OR he could have done what I planned to do as we painstakingly pushed through summations and derivatives - he could have understood that he didn't understand the math because of his own faults, and purchased a calculus cliffnotes book.

The point of this is that no one likes their time wasted. I don't care if all I had to do was watch the grass grow in my free time. Because of his outspoken stupidity, he deprived me of my free time.

One final note, which I won't ramble on about too much, is the disrespect of leaving a class while the professor is still teaching. Yes, this professor does not count absences, nor does he take off points for tardiness, but what kind of symbol was this student giving when he merely walked out in the middle of a lecture? It might be excusable (and in my opinion, it would be; I've done it before) to leave in the middle of a 200+ student lecture, but in a 16 person class, his disregard for the class made me angry, for the sole reason that a class of this caliber is not something that you should callously snub.

In conclusion, please, who ever reads this, think about your appearance. Not clothing or grooming (though technically I guess that could be mentioned), but the perception that you give to others. Think ahead - while the old cliche is "There are no stupid questions", there are, indeed, many stupid questions. Stupid questions are defined by their relevency. If Monsieur Red-Head had been in a 100 level math course, it might not be as bad that he didn't know what a tangent is. However, when a course assumes that you have mastered these skills, and the majority of the class either knows they should know these things or they do in fact know these things, then try to control yourself. No one wants to hear the rambling of an idiot (d'oh! beware of hypocrite!), when they could be doing something productive.

"Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln