Enduring annoying, distracting classmates

By Jeff Christian
The Collegian

THERE ARE ONLY a few weeks left in the semester and for most Fresno State students, final examinations can’t arrive soon enough.

Although finals week marks the culmination of courses for the semester, it also brings about another important culmination as well.

After spending months in class together, finals week is the last time that students will get to roll their eyes or shake their heads at a classmate that has been annoying them for months.

Every student on campus has at some point gone through the experience of listening to a classmate who is always opinionated and doesn’t let a setback such as a lack of coherent ideas and knowledge prevent them from earning their participation points.

These students are blessed with the uncanny ability of asking a never-ending series of questions after a test review session when classmates have packed up their belongings and the teacher has made it clear that the class is over.

Most of the time the questions asked were either answered by the professor earlier during the review or have no bearing on the test material and are simply questions asked in an attempt to “stump” the teacher or showoff somehow.

The review session before a test is for questions or clarifications on material and shouldn’t be used attempting cheesy jokes in an obvious attempt to suck-up to your professor.

If you have genuine questions than by all means ask them.

However, if you are simply brown nosing or asking questions to seem intelligent, than do your fellow classmates a favor and save it for the professor’s office hours.

Save your standup material for amateur night at the local comedy club as well.

Another characteristic of annoying classmates can be found in their attempt to make absurd connections between the course material and something that they saw on television.

Keep in mind, if it was something seen on “Frontline” or another news oriented show, than it might provide some educational value.

However, the rest of the class probably doesn’t care about how the subject material reminds you of a particular episode of CSI or Grey’s Anatomy.

Also, it would be greatly appreciated if you saved your episode synopsis for your friend until after class, instead of doing it during the professor’s lecture.

Courses that require specific recorded participation are the root cause of these annoying commentaries.

In some classes, students can earn points by simply participating in class discussion.

Participation points are usually ridiculous because most of the time it seems like the students that are doing the majority of the talking are not always adding something informative to the discussion and are simply talking just to flap their gums.

Thus, other students in the class are left hitting their heads on their desks as they are forced to listen to an annoying or inconsequential anecdote about some tangent subject that isn’t test or course related.

If only there were some sort of trapdoor system built into all classrooms that students could activate that would send them into an endless black hole and put an end to the problem.

Only a few more weeks remain until finals and an escape from the life commentary and awful jokes.

For those students who have gone through the boredom and excruciating pain of having such a student in one of their classes, you are probably a stronger person for having endured it.

But rest assured if we see one of those students in one of our classes at the beginning of the semester, we’ll be dropping.

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