One of the biggest perks of being an upperclassman is no longer needing to take classes in crowded lecture halls with 200 other students three days a week with an additional 50-minute discussion.
Senior year means seminars and classes of no more than 15 students: in my eyes, the ideal classroom. So I'm thrilled that of my three classes this semester—another beautiful thing about having fulfilled all my general education requirements—two courses are held only once a week with around 10 other students.
My contempt for large lectures stems almost entirely from two things: The bigger the classroom the more overheated it tends to be, and class interrupters. For those unfamiliar with class interrupters, it's either because you haven't experienced one yet (and should consider yourself blessed) or probably because you are one—in which case, I hate you.
Without fail, every semester within the first week or two of any large(ish) class, class interrupters will emerge. Normally they are older, perhaps returning students or graduate students who have found themselves out of place in a predominately undergraduate class. They always sit in the front row, never out of the professor's sight, and often, their backpacks have wheels... which is both ridiculous and awesome at once, but that's beside the point.
During lecture, they start off with at least some trepidation; they'll raise their hand and ask the professor a question that at least somewhat pertains to the material currently being discussed. But as time goes on, they grow bolder.
All of a sudden they're cracking jokes that no one finds funny (including the professor), challenging the professor's opinion or questioning their explanation of a problem; often they begin their sentences with, ""Well, I've found..."" or ""I'm not sure if I agree with...""
Usually the professors take it in stride because, well, they have very little choice and approximately 0.7 percent of their 250 students will ever speak up in class, even after directly being asked a question.
Occasionally, a professor will even embrace these students. Freshman year I took a nutritional science course with Pete Anderson and instead of telling our front-row friend to shut the eff up, he bonded with her. During class time I used their discussions as an opportunity to catch-up on other important tasks like my daily dose of sudoku.
This semester, however, I have the WORST class interrupter of ALL TIME. Not only do I hate her, but so do all of my classmates—particularly the people sitting around her who can feel the evil glares of other students on the backs of their heads as well—and I'm guessing my professor too.
Not only does this student, we'll call her ""Abby"" for identity protecting purposes, constantly speak out in my class, she no longer raises her hand and will occasionally just shout out (like, legitimately shout, raised voice and out of control) phrases or thoughts that only make sense to her.
It wouldn't be so bad if Abby weren't in my discussion as well. As bad as lecture is, discussion is even worse. Instead of a TA, our professor leads my section, so the class interrupter views this not as an opportunity for other students to get a word in, but rather a personal meeting between her and our prof. Clearly, the rest of us are just an audience to her great wit, knowledge and debate skills.
It's gotten to the point where if she opens her mouth, our entire class tenses up in anticipation of the obnoxiousness that is undoubtedly about to ensue. Almost out of instinct I whip around to look at my friend Megan wondering, ""What did we do to deserve this?""
Luckily, I believe our professor is growing as tired of Abby as we all are. Instead of giving her time to let out her longwinded questions/statements/jokes, he lets her get about 30 seconds in and then swiftly but still politely cuts her off and steers the discussion back to things that we're actually supposed to be learning.
Hopefully something will take the wind out of her sails. I'm sort of hoping that she'll fail her first midterm or something and realize that there's probably a pretty good reason that she's taking the class and not teaching it. That'll shut her up.
If you're an ""Abby"" and want to tell Jillian what you think of her and her subpar classroom performance, e-mail her at jlevy2@wisc.edu.
