Classmates

There is only one reason (other than the obvious situation of having overslept) that I will skip class: Someone in it annoys me. Often, this person is not the professor. It's usually another student, and this semester I am lucky enough to have two courses with real stand-outs. So you will understand why I have such a hard time making it to class on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Let me tell you about them:

First, we have My Intelligent Insight Into This Issue Will Entertain You So I Will Continue To Talk girl. No matter what the subject matter, she has an opinion, and usually she will throw in a pop culture reference to instigate a laugh. She also believes that louder=more entertaining.

Then there's Off-Topic Comment girl. Say you're talking about dressing female babies in pink and male babies in blue. Great. Well, this girl will talk about how she always thought babies dressed in yellow were cute. She's on the right page, but in the wrong paragraph. It happens every single time she is called on. I hate it when I see she has raised her hand.

Finally, to finish off my afternoon, we have my (least) favorite, to whom the first two cannot compare: Class Discussion Is An Opportunity For Me To Have An Exclusive Conversation With My Associate The Professor guy. Any comment he has, any question, is more important than anything anyone else has to say because he is just so much more engaged. He sits near the professor, and to be honest I think he sometimes forgets that he is NOT team-teaching this course with her, because he will often address the class with open-ended discussion questions or start to inform us about something we couldn't possibly know unless he told us. He has also, on occasion, called on people whose hands are raised. It doesn't get much more annoying than that.