People on campus annoy me with their faces

JR Tidwell Sports Editor

When I left high school I decided to head to a community college for the first two years of my higher education. I went to Bevill State-Jasper and had a blast while I was there. After those two years I made my way up to UNA, where I will graduate from this summer.

One major difference that I have noticed between community college and our four-year university is student apathy towards classes. I believe it is worse here than at the smaller school I attended. I hear the usual about students skipping class, not studying or doing the reading, etc., but I am guilty of these things just as much as other people. This also happened at Bevill State, so this is nothing new.

The real difference lies in the amount of respect shown to teachers between the two schools. The classes at Bevill State had just as many students in them as most classes here, especially upper-level classes. However, I never saw some of the lack of disrespect at Bevill State for teachers as I do here.

I have two examples, and I am not going to name names, mostly for anonymity, and the fact that I do not know their names. The first person seems to be a talker. He sits next to a friend of his in this particular class and they tend to have a lot to talk about.

In a recent class meeting this guy decided that what he and his friend were talking about was more important than listening to the professor’s lecture. This person continued to talk to his friend for several minutes while sitting no more than 15 feet away from the instructor. Not only is this guy not paying attention, he gets a double bonus for rudeness because he is making it difficult for me to pay attention. I am not OCD, but when someone in a class is talking over the teacher, I cannot pay attention as well as I normally can.

The next guy on my list of people that make me angry is a real winner as far as school goes. The class I have the displeasure of sharing with this guy is another lecture-style class. I have been told that if one does not pay attention in this class, he or she will generally not do well on the tests. If this is true, and if karma exists in any way, this jerk will fail everything in the class.

I have never seen this guy take the time or make the effort to take a single note. In a recent class, he did not even bring a scrap of paper or anything to write with. No, he just sits in the class for the entire 50 minutes texting on his phone or playing games on his iPod. It bothers me that this guy has absolutely no respect for the professor, and again I find this guy’s actions distracting.

The moral of this rant is that people come to school to learn, and even though one person does not care about what is being said, that does not give them the right to disrespect teachers and distract others. Furthermore, the teachers at our institution worked hard to get where they are, so have the decency to show them a little courtesy and respect.