How to deal with those annoying overly chatty classmates
By ALISSA GREENBERG | August 29, 2007
From the talkers’ mouths
In case you haven’t heard enough from these TWITs, here are some snippets from online discussions by students at a northeast liberal-arts school — confessions of the very TWITs you know and loathe, showing just how self-aware these inconsiderate yammerers really are:
THE DESTROYER OF SILENCE Sometimes we “just cannot stand quiet classes where the teacher does most of the talking because the rest of the class is too scared/shy/whatever to speak ... In my classes, especially in first year, this was a big problem.”
THE SPACE CASE “I am a TWIT ... because I am interested and I want to understand, and I am impulsive. I don’t have a filter which tells me when I am talking inappropriately. When it seems interesting to me I don’t stop and think ‘will this help anyone else? Is this interesting and original?’ I just speak.”
THE SUCK UP “The absolute crap and nonsense that some of my peers (myself included) are often capable of producing in the quest to score participation points is absurd. I usually just tune out or roll my eyes internally.” [Note that even TWITs get annoyed by other TWITs.]
THE DEBATER “I don’t think I’m smarter than everyone else, but I definitely do ask a bunch of questions in class and sometimes get into one-on-one discussions with a professor about a topic. I think it’s also that I’m just really interested in what’s going on and thus want to be further involved in the learning process.” |
It’s 8:30 Monday morning, and you lumber into your Intro to Econ seminar, pajama-clad, with a vat of coffee epoxied to your right hand. As the lecture — whose topic could be Introduction to the Art of Pie Charts for all the attention you’re able to pay — begins, the rest your classmates take their seats, looking equally miserable.Before the professor has gotten through his first point, though, he is forced to pause. You know before you look up what has derailed him — someone’s hand is up, the same hand that was raised seven times during the last class, and nine the before that. As the owner of the hand begins to speak, the students give a collective inward groan.
Congratulations: you are officially one of the thousands of students who yearly encounter the classroom phenomenon known, in kindlier circles, as That Wicked Irritating Talker: the TWIT.
The TWIT, whose natural habitats include seminars, lectures, and study groups, comes in several varieties. The more malevolent versions include THE SNOB, who truly thinks he is smarter than everyone in the class and seeks to impart his blessed knowledge to those not as fortunate; THE SHOWOFF, who wants to let everyone know exactly how thoroughly she did the reading; THE SUCK UP, who wants to make the teacher think he’s better than his classmates for purposes ranging from participation grades to job recommendations; and THE LAZY BOY, who already knows one aspect of the course cold and talks only on this subject in order to hide the fact that he’s not doing any actual work.
