Those annoying people who talk in class

Don't let the title of this blog post mislead you. I'm all for group discussions, debates, hearing other people's points of views and what not, but when you are in a class of 600 people that is just not feasible (hence the creation of conferences).

And yet, there seems to always be that one person who manages to raise their hand and speak at least once each class. Everyone in the class comes to recognize them and eventually hate them....said person either doesn't mind or never picks up on that. Since we never find out their true name but we need to label them something in order to bitch about them to our friends who are also in the class, I've come to give these people nicknames (they generally come to me on the spur of the moment in mid-bitch). Here are my two favorites....

Question Girl: This girl was in my Introduction to Behavioural Neuroscience class. Without fail, this question girl would raise her hand and ramble on and on and on about some article she had read or some research she had heard about and how it relates to this concept in the most minor insignificant way and NO ONE CARES! It would drive me crazy because she was clearly not saying anything of importance, just trying to prove to the 599 other people in that class that she's a know-it-all and trying to impress the professor. The professor (thank god!) was clearly unimpressed and would cut the girl off mid sentence to inform her that her "question" was too long. By mid semester, when a hand was raised in the front left side of the classroom I would instinctively groan and curse "question girl". Luckily, by the end of the semester, the professor was ignoring her, conveniently not looking in the direction of hear raised hand. That made my life.

Duh-huh! Boy: Oh duh-huh boy. You also annoyed the crap out of me. This guy was in my 600 person cognition class. Unlike question girl, this guy didn't ask questions. Instead this guy would make his appearance after the entire class had laughed about a joke the professor had made. He would wait for our laughter to subside and just when the professor was about to resume lecturing, he would literally bellow for the entire class to hear "DUH-HUH!" (I guess it was his way of obnoxiously laughing). At first, I'll admit it was funny. It made it seem like it took him a little longer to pick up on the joke and it made the entire class start to laugh again. But when he continued to do this for every single joke the professor made, it just got annoying. I'm a jumpy person and it would scare me when I wasn't expecting it.

Moral of the story: if you're in a huge class and your question is not relevant for the other people in the class, shoot an email or visit during office hours. quit wasting my time!