For some reason this quarter my classes have been plagued by the constantly time-bereft. No, this is not myself, taking 17 units, commuting 80 miles one way, then crossing town for my husband to go to law school and finally returning home just in time to go to bed and do it again.
Or at least that’s what I am guessing, given the plethora of class eaters. I’m not talking about a few squares of chocolate. There is “apple girl”, happily munching a granny smith in the middle of an art history lecture, class of 45 others. There is Doritos guy, who tries to furtively open a bag of doritos, then carefully eat them one at a time during class. There is pastry chick, who only had time to go to Starbucks (closest Starbucks: a 20 minute walk away) to grab some pastry that of course she must keep carefully tucked into the paper bag while she carefully picks off tiny nuggets of it.
And then, in my Greek civ last class of the term, there was cornflake girl. No, not Tori Amos. Cornflake girl apparently had a burning passion to consume a plastic single-serving container of cornflakes without milk. In the middle of a lecture hall. As she sat behind me, she fished around in the bowl for a few cornflakes, then merrily chomped on them crunchcrunchcrunchcrunch It took her a painful 15 minutes to eat the whole single-serving bowl. If I were younger and more impetuous, I’d have offered her a corn-flake enema. Think of it as an entirely new way to get your fiber.
If I have fucking time to eat outside of class, you do too, lazy fucks.
Sympathy, but you gotta complain to the prof and/or whoever else sets classroom policy. Too many places just don’t have clear guidelines about what behavior is and is not accepted in the classroom, and naturally the students are going to do what they want if they aren’t told not to.
Personally, I tend to feel that quiet beverage-sipping is acceptable, and quiet gum-chewing or coughdrop-sucking is tolerable on the grounds of discouraging drowsiness (or coughing) although it’s annoying as hell to watch. But audible munching and/or fiddling with food items or packaging is a bannable offense.
Are you in class 12 hours a day? No? Then you have time. Sorry kimera, there’s really no excuse for this. You can go a few hours without eating something unless you are horribly hypo-glycemic. I do commend you for being quiet, though - I’ve been known to have hard candy or something unobtrusive, myself. There’s no fucking excuse for eating a gigantic apple or stir fry (yeah, seen that too) in the middle of class, though - its these folks I’m aiming my invective against.
When I was at Uni I used to eat and drink in class. Most people did, as our seminars were usually 2-4 hours long and, well, people get hungry. Also, when you’re studying something as dry as linguistics, access to a quick sugar fix is pretty well essential. The professors didn’t mind and, as far as I could tell, no-one in class minded either. I never missed a word my professor or my classmates said and, since I usually sat at the back of the room, I’ve no reason to suppose anyone else did either. Especially since, as I’ve already said, most people would bring a snack to class anyway.
I guess my question is, just how loud are these people eating? Is it really not possible to ignore?
In my experience, most of the problem was with loud packaging. When I’m trying to pay attention to a lecture and write notes that crinkling of paper can be distracting. So can loud munching for that matter. This doesn’t even address the issue of smell. I don’t really need a whiff of that Burger King monstrosity you’re eating, thank you very much, this is a classroom not a cafeteria. However, I’m more concerned with noise than I am with smell.
I’m willing to be a little more forgiving if I’m in a class that takes more than an hour and a half. Especially if it’s an evening or early morning class though I still don’t want to be distracted by noise.
Ever day of my life I go four hours at a time without eating, and that often includes strenuous labor. People don’t eat in church, or in court, or many other places where it is unacceptable. If you can’t eat your Fritos during your walk to class, too bad.
In a particularly lucky week, I may have managed to earn enough in tips to afford just enough gasoline to make it through the week without my car dying on the freeway and eat two to three solid meals a day, find time between my classes and my work schedule to do some of my homework, and get enough sleep and caffeine to keep me awake through my three-hour Thursday night class (lucky me, my school offers one class in my major, and it’s at 7 PM on Thursday night!). Generally, though, after I’ve spent my paycheck on rent and overdue bills, my tips from working Sunday through Wednesday nights dry up before I can buy my dinner on Thursday night. Since I’m “lucky” enough to get Thursday afternoons off of work, I spend the few hours between my afternoon classes and my night class in a mad rush to catch up on the homework I haven’t had the time and energy to do earlier in the week. I do not have the time or the means to worry about nutrition during this time period.
When my night class is halfway through and our professor awards us a ten-minute break, those ten minutes are just about the liveliest of the night; after I evade a small handful of slackers begging for answers they’re too lazy to read themselves, I go to the bathroom after resisting a full-blown explosion for at least 30 minutes (remember, I need a lot of caffeine to stay alert enough to analyze the fundamentals of language on a Thursday night), and then I dig through my backpack for a packet of ramen noodles I left there some other day. Upon finding it (at which point my blood sugar is noticeably low*), I still have to walk across campus and sweet-talk a cafeteria employee into letting me use one of their soup bowls and some of their hot water, and then I have to cook my ramen and trek back across campus with it. At this point, if class has started before I get a chance to eat my dinner, so be it. And should you be there to chastise me for what probably amounts to my most significant indulgence of the night, I shall tell you exactly where you can stick your pencil.
Granted, I don’t have a related medical condition, but feeling woozy, weak and unfocused is generally not conducive to the night-class learning environment.
Why, in my day, we had to walk 15 miles barefoot through the snow just to get to the Starbucks, and underneath the snow were all the dead porcupines from the freeze… T’waint easy what with the cold and the spines, but you dont see me complainin’ young whippersnappers these days dont got any gumption.
Then you need to make your medical condition known to the professor who teaches the four hour class (without breaks) and I am sure reasonable accommodations can be made. Because that’s why you are chomping on those Fritos instead of quietly eating a banana, right? Low blood sugar?
[quote=Contrapuntal]
Does the professor allow eating in class? If so, you’re cool. If not, what you describe is special pleading, i.e., the rules do not apply to you.[/qutoe]
Yes. And so does the OP’s professor, apparently. And I’m sure her classmates have similar ideas about maximizing the efficiency of her pencil storage method.
It is not readily apparent to me. Why are they trying to hide it if it is allowed?
It really boils down to respect. Respect for the institution, for the material, for the teacher, and for your classmates. If you believe that it is more important to rip open a bag of snacks and munch on them one by one, than to avoid distracting a fellow student, and that being called on that justifies jamming a pencil into your classmate’s person, then I submit that you lack sufficient respect to really succeed in an academic setting. It is not now, and probably never will be, all about you.
Have you ever spoken to a room full of students? I have, and it’s pretty amazing how much of the stuff they think they’re hiding is blatantly obvious. If the fellow students can tell, so can the teacher. Believe it or not, I sympathize with the OP–although I find nothing wrong with the act of eating/drinking in class, in and of itself, it is maddening to hear the smack smack smack of an inconsiderate jerk eating with his gaping maw wide open. So if the OP somehow feels that the professor doesn’t notice Dorito Boy, why doesn’t she ask him? “Hi Dr. Whoever, I find it distracting when people crinkle their chip bags (gobble their Jumbo Ultra Bacon Burgers, slurp their sodas, etc.) during our class. Do you have a policy about this?” In the world I live on, that isn’t any more difficult than kvetching on a message board.
In kimera’s defense, it is possible to be in class six hours each day. Some of the undergraduates have classes in a solid block Monday and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. They have to eat when they can, since three of those classes are back to back in computer labs where no food or beverages are allowed. So their last professor of the day allows them to bring their lunch and eat it in that class, because she’s working on her own PhD and understands that her students are just too busy to eat.
If you really have an issue with this, talk to the professors and see if they can clarify their classroom etiquette policy. If the professors have a problem with this, they’ll let the class know. Otherwise, yeah, it’s distracting, but suck it up because it’s not your call.