<p>Does anybody have a classmate who asks questions CONSTANTLY, never keeps their head down, and you dread when they speak yet again?</p>
<p>There is this woman in my history class, I would think in her late 40s/early 50s. I actually made this account mainly to talk about her.</p>
<p>She is genuinely making me dislike the class, and I have no idea why the professor hasn't said something. She raises her hand to every single question, is often wrong, and is long-winded and off topic. Also, she trips over her words, saying "Uhh, umm," after every sentence she speaks, so it feels like a lifetime for her to finish speaking. When the professor responds to her, this lady just blows her off and starts talking over her.</p>
<p>When another student raises their hand at the same time as her, my professor ALWAYS picks the other person. To make things worse, often when somebody else answers this woman butts in with her own opinion. This has been incredibly off topic, too. In one case a student talked about how it used to take many, many days to travel to Boston from New York by horse, or something. This woman butts in with how far it is to drive from NYC to Greenwich, Connecticut, and how that took several hours during bad traffic. I wish I was joking. She also went on a tangent once about how Disney World is catered to kids, and not adults, and that her daughter enjoyed it more than she did. It had NOTHING to do with ANYTHING.</p>
<p>We had a field trip to a museum last week and she was constantly asking questions and interrupting our guide.
Also, we were assigned our final project and the instructions were very clear, but she raised her hand three separate times to ask stupid/obvious questions. I told 2 of my classmates that I can't stand her, and one of them said "She's really in to it, and she's a show off." Ugh. She speaks more than the professor does. </p>
<p>I’m guessing your professor is younger than this student, and might be intimidated by her? While the obvious piece of advice would be to talk to the prof, I’m going to suggest that you and a couple of friends in the class befriend the Talky Lady instead. Invite her for coffee after class. Be nice to her. Make her feel like she’s part of the group.(This will be difficult. ) It might rein her in during class discussions if she begins to see you as individuals with interesting and valuable opinions, but even if it doesn’t, it could be good practice for dealing with difficult coworkers in the future. (And yes, the prof should IMO be doing more to even out participation in class. And that’s good practice for dealing with difficult bosses…)</p>
<p>Ughhh I cannot stand these people. They act like they are the only people in the room just bear it and do the best you can to get your voice out there. </p>
<p>Also talk to your professor during office hours and mention that you think this student is taking up too much of the class time and that you appreciate that the professor is trying to make sure other students have a say perhaps they should derail her faster if she is getting off topic.</p>
<p>As a professor, let me assure you this is a situation I dread, and I’m sure most of my colleagues feel the same way. One thing you should realize is that the student may have a disability. If I get an notice from the ADA office, I usually play it safe around that student. Even if there is no accommodation that specifically says I must let a student ramble on and on, we are conditioned to avoid things that could even imaginably lead to a lawsuit – even when we are 99% sure that they won’t. The stakes are just too high.</p>
<p>And sometimes, even without ADA notices, we know things about students that make us more patient than we sometimes should be. I once had an older student with emphysema so bad he required an oxygen mask. But his pride kept him from wearing it to class, so none of the students knew unless they’d seen him around campus. Another student I had who behaved really strangely had some nervous tics that I recognized as (likely) the side-effects of certain medications. Two days ago a student told me that she suffers from very bad depression, and wanted me to know that in case she ever behaved strangely in class.</p>
<p>Empathy is a powerful motivator.</p>
<p>A professor also has to weigh the possible effects on the student against the effects on the class. You might think that a quiet word with the student would shut them up and things would go on as “normal.” Sometimes that happens. But I have also had students like this drop the class, give up on the class so that they spend the whole period in a funk and bomb their assignments, and in some cases go really weird in a passive-aggressive way that turns out to be as bad as the behavior I wanted to stop.</p>
<p>I personally wait for a few weeks before dropping that bomb.</p>
<p>The age thing complicates matters. No one wants to embarrass an adult in front of students young enough to be her children. So a professor puts it off for a while.</p>
<p>I’m really not trying to let your professor off the hook. The simplest explanation is that there’s no good excuse and your professor has let it go on too long.</p>
<p>If you do speak to the professor, be a polite and circumspect as you can. Don’t make assume you know the whole story. The best you can hope for is that the professor has been waiting for a turning point, and that you are providing the inspiration necessary to make a choice.</p>
<p>Does she sit in the exact seat class period?? Type a note & nicely ask that she shut her big bazoo. Tell her that she is being rude to her classmates…and that it’s not fair to everyone else in the class that she is being so disruptive. Tape it to her desk. I know this way sounds incredibly mean, just an idea. </p>
<p>It’s also possible that she is either an employee of the university or the spouse of an employee of the university and there could be political reasons making it difficult for the professor to take action.</p>
<p>I sometimes read a forum for professors and sometimes they like it if there is some peer pressure…so maybe you could talk to your professor and ask if it is okay to interrupt her after a few minutes by saying “Good point, <blabby>, I was also thinking…”</blabby></p>
<p>I was in a General Cultural Anthropology class last year with a guy like this. He seemed to have a comment on almost every point that the professor made. Half the time his points weren’t even relevant to the class material. He was a former military guy, and a lot of the things he said seemed to be little more than him talking about stuff he did in the military. A lot of the time it was completely unrelated, and sometimes it was so tangentially related that it seemed bizarre to even connect the points. </p>
<p>By about halfway through the semester, the professor kind of started ignoring him or cutting him off when he was saying something. </p>
<p>I can totally relate. There’s a girl in one of my French classes who asks the most dumb, clarifying questions. Shell basically ask if what the professor JUST said was right and the professor is just like “um, oui.”</p>
<p>My best advice is just to do your best to ignore it. Focus on your own thoughts and ideas and try not to let her ruffle your feathers too much. Easier said than done, I know, but this will probably (hopefully?) be the only class you’ll have with her, so chalk it up as an device leaning experience. </p>
) It might rein her in during class discussions if she begins to see you as individuals with interesting and valuable opinions, but even if it doesn’t, it could be good practice for dealing with difficult coworkers in the future. (And yes, the prof should IMO be doing more to even out participation in class. And that’s good practice for dealing with difficult bosses…)</p>
just bear it and do the best you can to get your voice out there. </p>