Throughout your morning lecture the constant sound of a stuffy nose begins to ring in your ear, where it eventually begins to sounds worse than nails being scratched against a chalkboard. Towards the end of the class when you can barely stand it, you feel like chucking a tissue box at the person’s head, and yelling, “just blow your nose already!”
As the new semester beings, and your daily routine starts to kick in, you may begin to notice that there is always that one annoying kid who sits behind you in class who cannot stop sniffling and coughing. In fact, there may be many more different types of irritating people than just the one leaky nose student.
After having experienced almost 15 years of schooling, I’ve come to observe five different types of annoying people that, unfortunately, show up in one of your classes at some point. Hence, here is a list that contains the repertoire of different types of annoying students and how to deal with them, because trust me; you’ll want to know how to try and block out their presence once you’ve experience their irksome characteristics.
1) The smug student who thinks they know everything, and believes that they are smarter than the professor: This is the type of student who doesn’t only have an answer to everything, but who also thinks that their answer is better than the professor’s. These type of people tend to sit as close to the professor as possible, so they’re ready to respond to a question with a lighting fast hand, (hardly giving any time for other students to answer the question or participate in the discussion), or ready to try and correct or outsmart the professor with a ceaseless string of facts. And when they do respond to a question, they speak with an authoritative voice, as if to imitate a reputable historian on the National Geographic channel. Their voice, and facial expression often also wears a hint of smugness, as if they think that what they are telling the class is the most important gospel that the class is going to hear all day. And when they try to correct or outsmart a professor during class, the whole experience can turn quite cringe worthy; as the student starts to sound argumentative, and the professor is starting to look a bit miffed that the student is trying expound upon the professor’s topic, and pretty much taking over in trying to teach the class. I’m not saying that it’s not good to be incredibly learned in a certain topic and to try and impress the professor and answer all questions that are posed. It’s awesome if you’re the Hermione Granger type of student, (admittedly I’m a bit like that myself). However, if you do this in a way that comes off as smug and conceited, then it can become a bit annoying, interruptive and disrespectful to the professor. In regards to trying to deal with this type of classmate, there’s not much you can do except to try and tune them out, and sit as far away as possible from them.
2) The noisy eater: This is the type of person who always brings food to class, whether it’s a bag of chips, or a large spread of a complete three course meal, they always have food with them. Bringing the food itself isn’t the problem; however, the way the eat it is a problem. For some reason or other, this person has never learned proper etiquette when it comes to eating (or they have and just have chosen to ignore it), and chews with their mouth open like a cow. It is even worse if this person sits behind you, because it seems like their crunching and munching is right next to your ear. Sometimes these people also bring their food along with them to other places on campus such as the library. This is probably the worst place to eat noisy food because if someone is eating a bag of chips, the ear splitting sound is heard throughout the whole floor of the library, shattering the peaceful silence. Instead of getting the urge to get up and rip the bag of chips from their hands, try putting in some earphones, or listen to music, or move seats, and hopefully you won’t have to suffer too much around the noisy eaters.
3) The pen clicker: Sometimes there tends to be a lot of pen clickers in class. Perhaps it is because a lot of people get nervous when turning in homework, or before a test, causing them to unleash their nervous energy on their pens. Yet it can still be irritating, when the guy next to you is constantly clicking his pen, and burning the distinctive, “click, click, click” sound into your brain. This can be especially annoying when your in the middle of a test and the person in front of you is stuck on a question, therefore spending their time clicking way. This problem can be solved a little easier than the other two, since you can try to kindly offer the person an extra pencil to use. However, give out your pencils with caution, because the pen clicker might start chewing on the end of your pencil if the person doesn’t have their pen to click on.
4) The straggler: This is the one student who always arrives late to class and who doesn’t have any supplies with them. It may be acceptable if your running five minutes late to class; however, this student shows up 20 or 30 minutes into the class, interrupting the professor’s lecture or if your watching a movie, blocking the view as they scramble to find an open seat. Once they’ve finally arrived to class, they also seem to lack essential materials that you should bring to class with you, such as paper or even a pen or pencil. After being annoyed that someone has interrupted the lesson, it can become even more annoying when you’ve lent him or her most of your paper and pens by the end of the semester. It’s not that hard to be punctual, but it seems pretty unbelievable that after being late to class, you would come unprepared. Why even bother coming to class if you’ve already missed half the lecture, and don’t even have a pen to take the rest of the notes? This is another situation, where you really can’t do much to improve it, unless you take the person aside and have a talk with them about timeliness. However, for the time being, tuning out this person, and concentrating on something else is the best bet to avoid becoming annoyed.
5) The constantly ill student: This is the student I have previously mentioned, who always has a runny nose, or a cold. There are two aspects of this situation that make this student particularly annoying. First off, the constant sound of a sniffling nose and a horse cough can be quite annoying, especially if your trying to concentrate during a test. Furthermore, it is annoying because this person who always seem to have some sort of alignment can unknowingly pass it to you. Hearing the sounds of someone suffering from a cold is annoying, but it is even more annoying if you yourself has caught that person’s cold, and is now suffering as well. However, there are some easy steps to prevent catching this person’s irritating habit. Carry some hand sanitizer with you, and use it after you’ve come in contact with an ill person, wash your hands a lot, and avoid touching your face, so you don’t spread the germs that you may have come in contact with.