Were all of your classes in the exact same room? Otherwise, how did you get between classes without either leaving one class early, or arriving in the next class late?
A) You do have a medical issue to deal with, and
B) You are aware enough of your fellows to make food choices that resolve the medical issues AND are not The Loudest Food On The Planet ™
Gotta respect that.
Maybe things have changed a ton since I was in school in the Middle Ages, I don’t know. But when I was in school, I had control over what classes I took, and when, and it was not generally accurate that a single elective would only be offered once every two years or that pre-requisites were scheduled so tightly together (or so infrequently) that there was literally no option other than to deprive myself of sustenance as I powered through an eight hour day. Even when classes were tightly together – because I had myself scheduled them that way – there were breaks between classes that would in theory allow me to wolf down something sufficient to make sure I didn’t drop dead of hunger or low blood sugar before I had an actual break. Of course, it was my responsibility to both be able to afford to purchase such food and to actually eat it. Heck, when I was deciding what classes to take in a given semester, I actually kept in mind the fact that, like most people, I would need a chance to eat during the day, and I consciously arranged my schedule accordingly. Maybe these days that is literally impossible to do – but I doubt it. I can appreciate that some people are cramming school in with work and family and commuting and what have you and are on the run from dawn until dusk but it is still your responsiblity to feed yourself, and to do so in a time, place, and fashion that doesn’t aggravate others as you put your own need to eat, the product of your own self-created busyness, above their need to concentrate in class – a privilege for which they have paid a shit-load of money, just like you did.
I think the OP’er’s complaint is perfectly valid. And she doesn’t have to choose between bitching on the message board about something that’s aggravating her or raising the issue with her profs; she can do both. And people who immediately take her argument and run with it to the ridiculous extreme – “she must mean no morsel must ever pass anyone’s lips, not even a sip of water!” – are being silly.
I don’t care if people eat in my seminars as long as they aren’t: (a) disgusting (mouth-open chomping); (b) distracting (loud crinkling and crunching); or (c) nauseating (pervasive smell of warmed-over dog-shit curry delight). I think it is ridiculous to argue that distracting, disgusting, or nauseating behavior should be tolerated due to a lack of planning or finances, or even medical conditions or homelessness.
IOW, I see people arguing that sometimes you must either eat in class or go without food. That wasn’t my experience nor is it a common problem that is bitched about on my campus, because if it was, they’d address it. So I don’t buy it, sorry. And Vinyl Turnip I laughed my ass off at your post. 
That may not be a problem on your campus because of the size of your school, or of your department. I can imagine smaller schools/departments having more of a problem with this.
As I see it, there are two perspectives:
EATERS: You might feel the need to eat, but you should make a sacrifice. The sacrifice you need to make isn’t going hungry: the sacrifice you need to make is that you’ll stick to unobtrusive foods. There are many, many different types of unobtrusive foods, and it’s certain that at least some of them are palatable to you. Even if a cheese sandwich (for example) isn’t your favorite food on earth, go ahead and choose that for lunch over a bowl of teriyaki, because the cheese sandwich doesn’t intrude on other folks’ education.
NON-EATERS: You might dislike being surrounded by eaters, but you should make a sacrifice. The sacrifice you need to make isn’t sitting quietly while folks slurp noodles or crunch Fritos or fry garlic in the seat next to you; the sacrifice you need to make is sitting quietly while folks eat unobtrusively. Yeah, you might not like it, but just as they’re meeting you halfway by choosing unobtrusive foods, you should meet them halfway by not speculating on the dire conditions that lead them to eating in class.
It doesn’t really matter whether someone is eating in class because they’re diabetic or because their class schedule is 14 hours straight classes or because they’re a mite peckish in the afternoons. As long as they’re trying to be unobtrusive, you can try to overlook the food.
That right there is a microcosm of liberal philosophy a la Daniel :).
Daniel
If your problem is with students who eat loudly in class, not students who eat in class at all, then we have no beef. And I agree, anyway.
Ah, if only I’d seen this post before I switched my major from Chemistry. 
Could you give more examples of unobtrusive foods? So far, I’ve seen peanut butter sandwich and cheese sandwich. Those are pretty good, I think, but they need to be made at home. There’s no facility to get those either at a restaurant, a take-out food place or a vending machine. For those that live on campus, that’s pretty hard to do if you don’t have a refrigerator in your room. I suppose you could go to the store on the weekend and buy the ingredients and make the stuff in your dorm room and wash the stuff in the community bathroom. Of course, then someone will complain that you’re using that for the wrong purpose.
The other thing that was mentioned was an orange. But that’s pretty sticky and messy. Going to a desk after someone ate an orange is definitely not a pleasure.
I think the reason that most people have stuff like fritos and cornflakes is because vending machines have them since they’re less perishable and they’re less messy to eat in class.
But only one of those has the possibility of affecting the physical situation positively.
And yeah, I’m just a little confused about the whole complaining about things in the Pit. From my short time here, my experience would indicate that there’s about an 80%+ chance (being generous, I think the percentage is actually higher) that the thread will turn on you. But when it does, the OP author is alway defensive, sometimes to the point of getting upset. I don’t get it.
I can understand complaining in MPSIMS a little more since sometimes expressing things gains clarity and sometimes people’s support helps, but these types of threads baffle me. Maybe I need to try one sometime. . . after I put on my kevlar suit.
I find I haven’t the heart to be too cranky with someone who’s name is Heffalump and Roo, so let me just politely point out that: (a) the fact that posting to the Pit will not actually change the IRL situation is pretty self-evident and I’m confident the OP’er knows that; and (b) I continue to find it strange that people who disapprove of the Pit or who simply don’t “get” the Pit nevertheless bother to post here.
:dubious:
And the same thing applies to your fellow students. They’re also clients, and they’ve also paid the same amount of money.
Gotta agree. This is one dish that does not keep well.
How about a banana? Or a ham (or roast beef, or turkey, etc.) sandwich–which might be available at a campus snack bar, or could be picked up at a Subway’s, or other local sub/sandwich shop.
Anyway, the ingredients for neither peanut butter nor cheese sandwiches include anything that needs to be washed, and peanut butter sandwiches don’t even include anything that needs to be refrigerated.
So? What’s your point? That they can do whatever the fuck they please? Would it be OK if I were to, I don’t know, open up a picnic basket and break out the fried chicken and beer at a funeral service in a funeral parlor? I mean, we were all invited, right? Who are the rest of these assholes to tell me how to behave? Free country, right? And why not bring a boombox to a church service and play The Kronos Quartet’s* Black Angels* at full blast? Anyone who doesn’t like it can just suck it up.
In case you missed it, I was demonstrating why the analogy of a classroom to a workplace is strained beyond use.
And my point is, it’s not all about YOU. As long as students have something quiet (a small sandwich, or what have you), they’re not hurting you.
I’m a prof whose classes meet once or twice a week. We have mandated breaks for classes that run more than one hour and 40 minutes, as mine do. I am more than happy to take such breaks, since I need to snack just as much as the students do, especially when the classes run back to back. That said, we eat outside of class for two major reasons: 1. to keep the classroom relatively tidy; and 2. to prevent infestations of rodents and insects.
Breaks are at least ten minutes long, and fortunately for us, vending machines and snack stops are nearby. This is at a community college.
I do try to eat lunch before my noon class, because working straight through until 4:30 would leave me famished and faint.
I have to remind students now and then not to eat and class. They seem to have no clue just how loud the plastic snack bags are, not to mention the crunching.
I go to a small community college so my experience is probably different than most people who went to smaller schools, but yes, we do have a lot of classes that I need that are only offered once or twice a year. It doesn’t help that my major (physical anthropology) isn’t a popular choice. I am hoping to get accepted for transfer without taking my missing Archeology course. If I don’t, I have to spend a whole extra semester here just to take one more class that I can’t take unless I find a friend willing to give me a ride or I bike for an hour on poorly lit streets or the professor lets me leave early to catch the last bus.
Most of the students take several courses at the main campus to get around this problem. Unfortunately, the public transportation here is so poor that it will take me 3 hours to commute there (a 20 minute drive!!) even if I take the more expensive train instead of the buses.
My experience is not typical of a regular college student, but these things do happen.
Many vending machines and all the stores on my campus offer pre-made sandwiches, Pop-Tarts, soft cookies, energy bars, etc. IOW, no excuse.
Hey thanks! I appreciate that.
And you’re right, I should have been more clear. As to the second part of your point, I totally “get” those threads in the Pit that ask a question about Board policy that don’t fit in ATMB and those threads that ask a mod why they made a judgment call or that call a mod out to answer for something or to Pit another member of the Board. Those make sense to me because they help the functioning of the Board as a whole. They serve as escape valves for other parts of the Board where that behavior would create a disturbance. And I even kinda “get” those threads where people are just mad about some principle that they’re willing to argue about just on principle, although sometimes I think those are just cop-outs from GD.
So the category of Pit threads I don’t “get” are those that don’t fall in the above categories and additionally the OP author seems to have some personal stake in the outcome. Like in this case, the OP author went from:
post #1
to post #35
and I didn’t get the feeling that she changed her position because she felt that people made good points and she was acknowledging that. I got the feeling that she changed her position because she seemed surprised that anyone would disagree. Of course, I can’t read her mind, so I can’t know that for sure. And that gets me back to your first point.
I’m not as confident as you that the OP knew before this thread that talking to the profs. was more effective than starting a thread on it. Of course, that’s an argument that the thread was effective since something was learned, but for that purpose, it might have been just as effective in MPSIMS.
(and because you were kind enough not to slam me and because I’m not so great in English, I’ll put the whole who’s, whose thing in very small letters)
Queen, Bruin, so it does seem that people do expect others to eat on campus and perhaps then in class. If these foods wouldn’t bother you (the wrappers on them would seem to be an issue), perhaps there’s a way to make your fellow students more aware of the level of noise that would be acceptable to you.
I think I’m on board with Queen Bruin and Jodi. I imagine there are always going to be some extreme outliers where folks have a solid schedule for 8 hours. But I suspect many of the violators of the common sense policy are just being self-centered jackasses.
First off, if you must eat, breakfast bars, nondescript sandwiches, and things like that seem most logical. Something’s got to give. If you have a day from hell, I just don’t think you’re going to be able to have a great three-course meal of your choice. You’ll probably need to have a snack to tide you over until class is over. No apples, chips, carrots, or tuna, I’d say.
I do understand that life intervenes and it is not always possible (or desirable) to schedule classes out over a week. But as an academic advisor, we had policies about how many courses students could take, because the department didn’t want students eating, sleeping, folding laundry, etc. in classes. One university where I worked had two periods during each day when no classes were scheduled, just so the back-to-back gang would have 30 minutes to eat/make phone calls, etc.
I went to UT Austin for undergrad from 1990-1995. I had a lot of seminar courses, so eating in those was out of the question. In larger classes, I saw a lot of the candy bar and pop tart eaters out there. No big thing. Here in grad school, I admit that most of the eating is under control - mostly coffee drinkers, though I do remember a course that had a girl who would knit during the lecture. :eek: We see more stuff like students surfing the web during classes - and being pretty obvious about it. (Hell, when I do it, I turn my contrast down on my lapper, disable the browser’s image autoload, and go to town. Subtle as all get-out.)
I’ll be starting a tenure track position next fall and teaching my first classes in the spring… I gotta tell ya, this is going into the syllabus - an eating policy!
I am running on the expectation that the people I attend college with are not five year olds in need of a nanny. I have had more than one professor state the same idea (though not the prof of the class with the most egregious offenders). Evidently however, some people do not know when it is and when it is not appropriate to see to biological needs (or desires) in certain situations, or how to be unobtrusive when one must positively eat in the middle of lecture. A false assumption, evidently. Next time, I’ll be sure to interrupt class long enough to play mommy. God knows more non-traditional students need to speak up about this sort of thing. It’ll be great for our reputation.
Or perhaps they have a higher tolerance level for noise and distraction than you do and they have the ability to multi-task. So perhaps they expect this same tolerance level and ability from others. Since it seems to be bothering you and not them, letting them know seems the more helpful course of action than letting us know.