As I have mentioned before I am taking a Physics class this summer. It is my last non-Engineering course that I am scheduled to take. There are 10 of in the class.
One of the trends that I’ve noticed since starting school nearly 1 1/2 years ago is that the younger generation just doesn’t know how to shut up. Cell phones beep, Blackberry keys click and the classroom is never without an undercurrent of whispering and barely audible chatter in the back of the room. I’ve noticed that the “chatter” is occasionally in a different language and that varies among the student population in the room. I give those folks the benefit of the doubt and hope that there is some sort of translating going on.
I never thought that I would sit in a college classroom and have the professor have to tell the students repeatedly that they need to stop talking. Maybe it’s because I’m older and grew up in a different era but this noise in the classroom today is much like the chatter we often encounter in the movie theatre. Quite frankly it makes me insane.
I haven’t come to the point where I’ve stood up and yelled “Would you all just SHUT UP?”, primarily because I think that would be rude for all to endure as well as embarrassing for the professor that doesn’t have a handle on the room, but I did have a thought zing through my head in class tonight that I shared on my Twitter (during our precisely seven minute break):
Would it be rude to shut classmates up via duct tape across the mouth?
