Too hard to mute your laptop in class?
By Crystal Kotow
4th year Communication Studies student
January 28, 2009
I’m a fourth year Communication Studies student and because of a lack of options for my final semester as an undergrad, I decided to enroll in a 100-level non-Communication Studies class to fulfill my Degree Audit requirements.
It’s been a while since I’ve been in a class with more than 150 people (three years, perhaps?), and after only three classes I can confidently say that there is a severe lack of respect for graduate students and PhD students (and sometimes full-time professors), who teach night classes (Note: This isn’t the first night class I’ve taken that had a graduate student teaching a mass of chatty, impatient undergrads. Disrespect is found all across the board).
I find it very disrespectful when for three full hours there is a buzz of low voices behind me (I usually sit at the front of the lecture hall).
In my current night class I’ve had people behind me answer cell phones, listen to music really low on their computers, have full conversations with the person beside them, leave in groups of three or four people during the lecture, and best of all was one person whose MSN Messenger message alert kept going off throughout class.
Is it so hard to mute your laptops? I don’t have one, so maybe it is, yet something tells me it isn’t so difficult.
I have to ask myself why people can’t pay attention for three hours without talking on MSN, perusing Facebook, or texting on their cell phones.
The most ridiculous of all situations I see in every class involves a cell phone sitting on the keyboard of a laptop and the person switching from MSN to cell texting and back again.
What’s up with that? You can’t tell me it’s that hard to just be engaged in a lecture instead of talking to friends.
I’m sure the conversations are riveting, but a lot of the time so are the lectures your parents are paying nearly $3,000 a semester for you to sit in on. My apologies if you’re paying your way through school. For you, there is no excuse.
You say you do these things because you’re bored, right? There’s a simple solution for those of you who can’t find the energy to learn: go home.
Make life sweeter for those of us who like learning, who value our education, who are easily annoyed and distracted by mindless banter in hushed -- yet still TOTALLY audible -- voices.
I’m a strong proponent of banishing Wi-Fi from campus lecture halls. I’m not technologically inclined, so I’m not sure if this is possible. However I am fairly confident that if Internet access was limited to all areas on campus that aren’t classrooms, there would be an increase in grades and perhaps an increase in thoughtful discussion during lectures.
It’s only logical seeing as people would have to pay attention and form some type of educated opinion. Also, Wi-Fi on campus is still relatively new.
There was a time when *GASP* you couldn’t access Facebook during class! (Oh Em Gee!) How did those people survive?
Our professors, whether they are tenured, sessional, PhD or graduate students, all deserve the utmost respect for working hard enough to be qualified to teach others.
They also deserve respect for putting up with sometimes high levels of disrespect. If you’re a full-time student it means you spend 15 hours each week in class, assuming of course that you choose to go to class.
Fifteen hours is not a lot, so turn off your cell phones, forget about Facebook and don’t sign into messenger services. Shy away, for a moment, from the technologies that are seriously running your life.
It will benefit you in more ways than just increasing the likelihood you’ll get a decent grade; people like me won’t secretly hate you from afar. But most of all it will show true respect for the people whose work expands our minds.
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