There’s a kid who sits in the front row of my general psychology course. He slouches and twists languidly back and forth in his chair like some sort of obnoxious windup children’s toy. Like clockwork, a lanky arm cranks skyward, where click, two scrawny fingers pop forth to show that his gears are wound tight. The class collectively braces against the impending insolence. The lecturer prods him reluctantly, and he bursts with pompous noise.
“Don’t you think that given the subjectivity of perceptual reality, the philosophical problem of free will has become existential in nature?” he says. “I consider reality to be a sort of sixth sense, an amalgamation of our other senses if you will, so I find the question of free will to be dependent upon one’s own perception of deterministic world views.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “The World’s Most Pretentious Jack-in-the-Box.”
I haven’t even seen this kid’s face, and I can’t stand him. Here’s why:
1. His “questions” aren’t actually questions.
When Jack raises his hand, his comment is usually phrased as a question, but he’s not asking the lecturer for any new information or clarification. He’s using the class as a captive audience to demonstrate his knowledge. This is a recipe for earning your classmates’ ire because it wastes our time. I came to class for the course material, not an unqualified opinion.
It gets even worse when his interjections are ill-disguised attempts to argue a point with the lecturer. Although I can see the value of academic debate and I believe the best teachers will admit when they are wrong, arguing with your instructor is something that must be handled very tactfully. If you think something the instructor said is inaccurate, do the polite thing and bring it up after class. This will save both yourself and the lecturer the embarrassing experience of being proven wrong in front of an audience.
2. Nobody understands what the heck he’s talking about.
Discourse 101: deliver your message in a way that your audience can understand, appreciate and respond to. Jack speaks in a pretentious code-language. For all I know, he’s contributing some original and insightful material, but I’m not going to bother sifting through all the unnecessary syllables to find the simple meaning because that’s not my job as the listener. And if what Jack is trying to say reaches farther than his audience is intellectually capable of grasping, I’m sure the lecturer would love to chat with him about it after class or during office hours.
3. His questions are timed very poorly.
Is the lecturer in the middle of explaining a detailed, highly technical concept? Is the lecturer trying to clarify a point for a genuinely confused pupil? Is class about to end? You can bet that Jack has his hand in the air with no regard for how the rest of the class feels about it. If he were asking reasonable questions to help himself understand the course material, it wouldn’t be that bad, but the problem is exacerbated by his pretentious tone.
The underlying problem here is that Jack isn’t considering the rest of the room when he raises his hand. Asking questions is an important part of getting a good education, but there is a time and place for every question. Knowing when, where and how to ask your question will ensure that you get the most productive answers – without pissing anyone off.