<p>I wonder why that kind of thing gets to us so much sometimes. My sympathies to you, that one sounds like it was a teeth grinder.</p>
<p>I have a similar, frustrating experience - unfortunately, ongoing - with a student in my class. This person is probably the most hostile, narrow-minded, entitled person I've met at my current school; highlights of her endearing persona include comments such as "When Sikhs grow older, does their turban grow smaller and then they graduate on to being Muslim?" Bear in mind, this is right after a great speech given on Sikhism by a student approx. 1000 times more intelligent, humble, and socially competent than my teeth grindee: and before this snippet of gold, she tried to maintain her 24/7 participation point obsession by proclaiming she knew a lot of about a very similar religion... after a couple of minutes of clarification, the presenter realized this girl hadn't even caught on to the fact that yes, indeed, the topic was about Sikhism. </p>
<p>And no, it's not an American God-given right to stomp into Mosques or Sikh temples without wearing head covering (she was very righteously upset over the prospect that if, for SOME improbable reason, she'd ever have to interact with people of another faith it wouldn't be ok to wear whatever she wanted).</p>
<p>On the very first day of class, this teeth grindee made sure everybody knew that 1) she's going to PEPP-AH-DINE and 2) this classroom ain't good enough for her. Her presentation? About her. Now, I don't mind boobs, but please, for the love of God, if I wanted to see powerpoint slides of you doing quasi-professional, cleavage-liberal photo shoots for your "Hollywood Dream Career"... I would've asked. Or, you know, probably not.</p>
<p>My professor shared the news about me getting into Yale to this particular class. I'd rather she hadn't, except it felt so great, horribly horribly great, to see the PEPP-AH-DINE chick's face drop; of course, she had to nag and insult me for 30 minutes after that ("so it must've been the test scores, huh." <em>look of disgust</em> ), but who cares. Of all the people that came up to me after the class to congratulate and chat about it, she STOMPED up on me, feigned hearing loss for some weird reason, kept asking questions about how she could get into Yale without absorbing an inch of the honest advice I tried to give her and then stalked away saying I took things too personal after I told her she had to at least pretend to be respectful if she wanted my help. I don't know why I even bother sometimes.</p>
<p>Phew. Rants are great!</p>