The Proper Care and Maintenance of a Mouse Trap
Sometimes, I like to take a break from saving the world to actually attend some lectures. However I've noticed that a lot of people tend to be breaking the unwritten guidelines of behaviour during these sacred times. So what follows are some of what I consider to be the more important ones.
Snoring
Falling asleep in a lecture is pretty common. Sometimes it's because you've been up studying all night and other times it's because a darkened room is very conducive to sleep. I have nothing but respect for the noble state of the sleeping scholar. Their gentle nods of the head, the hunched way they sit over their notebook and the startled look on their face when the lights come back on at the conclusion. However the snoring scholar is something I believe every lecture can do without.
Eating
It's five p.m. You've spent the whole day in the library desperately scribbling away to get your paper on 19th Regency era Romance Literature finished before your next class. You haven't had time to eat because you've barely had time to sleep. Finally you drop the assignment into the box and head to the final lecture of the day. You sit down, barely able to keep your eyelids open, and someone sits next to you. They pull out a sandwich they have obviously just purchased from the food court. Its smell is intoxicating. You believe that you could subsist entirely on the mere idea of this sandwich. You lean over and gently bash the owner of the sandwich unconscious and claim your reward. This is why I advise against eating delicious food during lectures.
Keyboards
I am actually guilty of this one myself. I like to take my laptop into lectures so my notes don't devolve into doodles of penguins and spaceships. I respect that some lecturers dislike seeing laptops open during lectures as they believe, sometimes quite rightly, that students will fritter their lecture time away by idly clicking 'refresh' on Facebook. I have no problem with this. My problem rests with the personality type known as the “aggressive” note-taker. This person will tap away at their keyboard as if every single key has committed a grave sin against them and must be punished. It would be an exaggeration to say that it can be hard to hear the lecturer but honestly it's still pretty intrusive.
Talker
Finally we come to the talker. This person hasn't seen their friend in forever and will engage in an energetic conversation with them about topics as diverse as politics, literature and whether or not one of them saw what was on the telly the previous night. Catching up with friends is an activity I wholeheartedly endorse. Catching up with friends when the lecturer is attempting to explain the finer points of a topic is a crime I would welcome the death penalty for.
So there you have just a few simple rules that really do make me sound like an old man complaining about the kids on his lawn. I only have this to say in my defence; in at least one lecture in all my time at Murdoch I've been in breach of all four of these guidelines. And yes, the title is completely misleading and unrelated to the topic.
2 comments:
Nice post man!
Imagine how exciting it would be to see somebody playing Starcraft II in a lecture!
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