Eating in class - that's a beatin'

The BBQ Pit
141

[QUOTE=Hippy Hollow]
Yes! I absolutely despise the stench of hard-boiled eggs. I am in awe of people who can choke the foul-smelling beasts down their throats. I can’t even bear to eat around someone who has a hard-boiled egg… it makes me nauseous. Please, eat the cheese sticks instead!

Funyuns, Corn Nuts, and hard-boiled eggs… guaranteed to earn you plenty of space around your seat.
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My dad adores them, and makes a big pot several times a week. The stench when he boils them is incredible.

(I prefer MY eggs scrambled, with a bit of salt and pepper, por favor. But not during lectures).

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[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
My dad adores them, and makes a big pot several times a week. The stench when he boils them is incredible.

(I prefer MY eggs scrambled, with a bit of salt and pepper, por favor. But not during lectures).
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Yeah, I love scrambled eggs, and Denver-style omelets. But I think fried and boiled eggs are absolutely revolting. IT SMELLS LIKE ASS, people. Guess what your breath smells like after eating 'em? I make my potato salad egg-free. If you’re so inclined, boiling a stinkbomb and cut it up, and toss it in your own bowl. Ick.

I don’t really have much to add to the thread, besides the fact that I thought about egregious eaters in my collegiate experience. I remember a guy who had a chili get-up in class. It ponged something fierce - nothing subtle about chili in a room with no windows. I also remember someone brought some of that popcorn that is already popped and isn’t hot from the microwave - that stuff stinks pretty bad as well. Other than that, it’s been pretty mild, in my experience.

143

[QUOTE=Hippy Hollow]
Yeah, I love scrambled eggs, and Denver-style omelets. But I think fried and boiled eggs are absolutely revolting. IT SMELLS LIKE ASS, people. Guess what your breath smells like after eating 'em? I make my potato salad egg-free. If you’re so inclined, boiling a stinkbomb and cut it up, and toss it in your own bowl. Ick.

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My father found a way to make scrambled eggs and BAKE them-they’re delicious. He puts cheese, and buttermilk, and such in-soooo good.

As for potato salad, I prefer German style.

144

[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
My dad adores them, and makes a big pot several times a week. The stench when he boils them is incredible.

(I prefer MY eggs scrambled, with a bit of salt and pepper, por favor. But not during lectures).
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I hate boiled eggs, too. I sometimes make them for my son, who will eat egg yolks but not meat, which isn’t that big a deal since we don’t eat much meat, either. Anyway, it practically makes me gag to peel the little buggers and strip off the whites. Ick. Too bad there’s no vomiting smiley. I can’t wait until he’s old enough to eat a scrambled egg vs. just the yolk.

145

Well, that’s why gum and breath mints were invented.
One more time: I was referring to things which could be eaten outside the classroom, as they should be. The policy at my campus is pretty strict in regard to people eating in class–i.e., the practice should be discouraged for reasons which have already been noted.

146

[QUOTE=vivalostwages]
Well, that’s why gum and breath mints were invented.
One more time: I was referring to things which could be eaten outside the classroom, as they should be. The policy at my campus is pretty strict in regard to people eating in class–i.e., the practice should be discouraged for reasons which have already been noted.
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I understood your point - just a tangent about stinky food! And I totally agree that people can go to town outside of the classroom door, but once inside, like you, I believe funtime should end. Again, exception for those who are medically in need, but everyone else… stop eating! (And again, the innocuous sandwich, Snickers, or breakfast bar is A-OK.)

And in a straight lecture, if you breathe with your mouth closed, what you ate shouldn’t be a problem!

147

[QUOTE=Fionn]
Everything you’ve said boils down to “I can’t be arsed to accommodate the people around me in the classes I’ve scheduled for myself.” Why is it the responsibility of people who don’t want to hear crinkling paper or smell sushi during a lecture to suck it up and deal with it?
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Like she said (paraphrased), it’s called “life”.

And unless the professor specifically forbids it, then good grief, boo hoo. Again, what ARE you people going to do when you get out into the workaday world? Believe me, coworkers make a hell of a lot more annoying noises and do more annoying things than crackle open a bag of chips.

Heaven forbid some of you get “talks too loudly on the phone even through a closed office” man, or “coughs like she’s got a hairball” woman (my mom had her as a worker at the Muni before she retired).

I have two jobs, I am an adjunct faculty at an Alaskan University, and I work fulltime in an Environmental company (Since I teach PE, I don’t allow students in my classes to eat during activities, so far in 9 years of teaching, I"ve not had one try to eat while in the pool or when dancing). I also attend classes at the same university, since I’m frequently working (like most of my fellow students), I take a lot of night and weekend classes, and most of us eat during class. With fulltime jobs, lives and classes on top of that, it’s not as if we’re murdering someone’s first born by doing so. It’s pretty much expected and not thought of as something rude or odd.

Our spanish instructor even brings bagels on occasion.

And again, this is meant in those cases in which there is no rule against eating in class. If there is, then suck it up and talk to the instructor. Sheesh, what a nation of pantywaists!

148

[QUOTE=Vinyl Turnip]
Seem to be a lot of sufferers of “hypoglycemia” among the defenders of in-class dining. Is this really such a common condition, or is it another one of those things (like bibliomania, genius-level intelligence, ADD, and Asperger Syndrome) that seems to manifest itself in Dopers at a much higher ratio than in the general population?
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I’m a diabetic. I’ve never let anything stop me from eating in class or leaving to get some orange juice from a vending machine if the crackers in my backpack won’t cover it. I’ve only had one high school teacher ask me not to eat in freaking study hall, which was an unpopular request with the rest of the teaching staff.

Anyway, I know three or four hypoglycemics and five or six other diabetics, who all attend/have attended classes and eat/ate in them if need be. Less than ten percent of the population has actual, doctor-diagnosed hypoglycemia that isn’t related to diabetes. But anyone can have their blood sugar drop if they haven’t eaten recently enough and therefore have some shakiness or difficulty in concentrating.

149

I’m not hypoglycemic, diabetic or anything else and haven’t claimed to be, but like Miss Purl McKnittington noted, anyone can get low blood sugar and their academic performance can suffer greatly. My body is such that if I don’t eat for a long enough period of time, I start to feel weak and I can’t focus on anything, it’s an enormous effort to talk or move and I certainly can’t do homework or take notes. Sometimes I feel myself fading into a hypnagogic state too (though awake, I entertain a series of progressively weirder and more dream-like thoughts until I finally realize I’m drifting away from reality and I plug back into the world). It doesn’t ever get that bad unless I go all day without eating; but going more than five or six hours without eating can (depending on other factors) put me into a state where I’m so focused on my next meal that I just can’t put all of my concentration on any one task.

150

[QUOTE=CanvasShoes]
Like she said (paraphrased), it’s called “life”.

And unless the professor specifically forbids it, then good grief, boo hoo. Again, what ARE you people going to do when you get out into the workaday world? Believe me, coworkers make a hell of a lot more annoying noises and do more annoying things than crackle open a bag of chips.

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Isn’t this what rude people always say?

151

To clarify:

I have no problem with people eating absolutely anywhere if they have a genuine medical need to do so. As evidenced here, most people could plan their meals differently but don’t.

If you’re eating in class for your own convenience and don’t care who you’re offending, you’re in the same boat as people who talk on cell phones in movie theaters, let their kids scream like howler monkeys in public places, leave shopping carts free to careen into other people’s cars, cut people off in traffic and do a million other things that people bitch about here all the time. If you’re not willing to change your behavior, suck it up and accept some people are going to think you’re annoying.

152

My history class is amazing in this respect. I walk in and take my seat, and look around me in awe as half the class (~80-90 people) pull out food, from sandwiches to tupperware containers of leftovers from home, to bags of chips, candy, etc. It’s like the lunchroom in there. For the most part it isn’t that loud, but the smells get to me at times. Mostly I think it’s amusing, because it happens every day.

Me, because of the surgery I had and the way my digestive system is different as a result, I always keep a granola bar or something in my purse, because I have to eat fairly frequently or I get very sick. I’ve only had to pull one out in class maybe twice all semester, though, and I am always paranoid about making sure I’m quiet about it.

Cell phones audibly ringing in class bug me. I keep mine on vibrate, and at the beginning of the semester I always explain to my professors “hey, I have a kid and we have no relatives/etc in this state, so I have to be reachable, but I won’t let it interfere with class” to explain why my phone isn’t actually turned off and give a heads-up as to why I might suddenly leave the room. That said, I’ve only gotten a call from the school once while I was in class. I have the school programmed into my phone so I could tell it was them calling. I missed answering the call, but stepped out into the hall and called them right back. This was during a computer lab course, though, so it really wasn’t intrusive at all.

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[QUOTE=CanvasShoes]

And unless the professor specifically forbids it, then good grief, boo hoo. Again, what ARE you people going to do when you get out into the workaday world? Believe me, coworkers make a hell of a lot more annoying noises and do more annoying things than crackle open a bag of chips.
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When a school starts paying students $50,000 a year to attend, one can make the effort not to bitch and complain. When someone pays $30,000 a year to attend a college, I think it’s well within reason for them to be annoyed by such things. Besides in the work world, you can filter out all the sounds. Put on your headphones. Become lost in your own thoughts. Whatever. Kinda hard to do that in class when you’re trying to listen to a professor lecture.

OpalCat sounds perfectly reasonable in the way she handles her snacks and important cell phone calls. I could only wish more people were that polite and conscientious. At any rate, I haven’t set foot in a classroom in over 10 years, so it’s not going to bug me any time soon.

154

[QUOTE=pulykamell]
When a school starts paying students $50,000 a year to attend, one can make the effort not to bitch and complain. When someone pays $30,000 a year to attend a college, I think it’s well within reason for them to be annoyed by such things. Besides in the work world, you can filter out all the sounds. Put on your headphones. Become lost in your own thoughts. Whatever. Kinda hard to do that in class when you’re trying to listen to a professor lecture.
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In the interests of fighting ignorance, the reality is that the education costs about $130,000 and you’re being asked to foot $30,000 of the bill.

[QUOTE=Lewis and Winston, 1997]
Student subsidies are big, both in dollar terms and as a share of the typical student’s total educational costs. 1991 data from the Department of Education showed that the average college in the US provided an education that cost $10,653 a year to produce and charged its average student a net price of $3,101. So the typical student got a $7,551 subsidy that covered 71% of his educational costs — the net price he paid covered the remaining 29%. Put a bit differently, he paid 29 cents for a dollar’s worth of education.
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Folks don’t realize that the majority of college costs are covered by subsidies paid by the taxpayers (public schools) and donors (public and private schools). It’s a misconception that students and families are footing the entire bill… not even close.

Okay, back OT. Stop eating in class!

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[QUOTE=Hippy Hollow]

Folks don’t realize that the majority of college costs are covered by subsidies paid by the taxpayers (public schools) and donors (public and private schools). It’s a misconception that students and families are footing the entire bill… not even close.

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Understood, but that’s still $30,000 (or whatever) coming out of a student’s pocket every year. It is a reasonable expectation that if one pays that much–whether subsidized or not–one should expect a non-distracting environment conducive to education.

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[QUOTE=CanvasShoes]
Like she said (paraphrased), it’s called “life”.

And unless the professor specifically forbids it, then good grief, boo hoo. Again, what ARE you people going to do when you get out into the workaday world? Believe me, coworkers make a hell of a lot more annoying noises and do more annoying things than crackle open a bag of chips.

snip

And again, this is meant in those cases in which there is no rule against eating in class. If there is, then suck it up and talk to the instructor. Sheesh, what a nation of pantywaists!
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I think most people understand that an office environment is far different from a classroom environment. People in offices each are expected to complete different tasks from their colleagues at the same time, and it’s hard to do that in silence. That means that while I might be reading white papers, someone next to me might be on a conference call. Also, many people are in an office for at least eight hours a day, and they sometimes don’t even get to leave for lunch.

However, in class, everyone’s supposed to be doing the same thing - listening to the professor…quietly. And even if it’s a day-long class or if you have classes back to back all day, you still have breaks where you can stand, chat with others even if on the run and possibly eat something.

I’ve got no beef with eating quietly in class. It’s just that I’ve seen several people on the board say, “What are you going to do when you’re in the real world??” when I don’t think that an office environment in general is very comparable to a classroom environment. Of course, some classes may differ and have teams of people working together or working in a lab, where you would expect more noise, but in a lecture, I don’t think it’s completely outlandish to expect quiet.

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[QUOTE=overlyverbose]
I’ve got no beef with eating quietly in class. It’s just that I’ve seen several people on the board say, “What are you going to do when you’re in the real world??” when I don’t think that an office environment in general is very comparable to a classroom environment. Of course, some classes may differ and have teams of people working together or working in a lab, where you would expect more noise, but in a lecture, I don’t think it’s completely outlandish to expect quiet.
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Good points, overlyverbose. I don’t understand the logic behind folks who are suggesting that college is not the real world. What world is it, exactly? There are a thousand discrete tasks that link to the concept of getting a degree, chief amongst them being a) being able to work effectively in a group setting, and b) respectfully accomplishing your personal goals without impinging on the abilities of others to do the same.

Attending a lecture is directly analogous to attending a conference presentation, or going to an inservice/training. Personally, I don’t know too many people who are chomping down on pickle and onion sarnies with chips in those settings. If it’s your office cubicle mates together in an informal meeting, maybe not, but the other ones require a little more decorum. And nobody will likely tell you to knock it off, either. You’ll just get weird looks, talked about behind your back, and poor performance evaluations and/or eventually fired.

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[QUOTE=Fionn]
Isn’t this what rude people always say?
[/QUOTE]
First off, I don’t have a dog in the “eating chips or other noisy foods in class” fight. I’m not a chip fan. But I can understand and sympathize with how a hardworking student might have to resort to vending machine food.

Second, way to completely miss the point. People making noise, whether in the workplace or at school is just people being people. (unless someone specifially asks them to not eat certain foods and they are rude in refusing or something).

Someone earlier in the thread said that noise at work and noise in a classroom are two completely different things.

No they’re not. Part of getting a degree is learning about the ethics and politics of how it all works in the workaday world. You think Cat-Hairball-hacking-woman was doing it to be rude? No, she was (probably still is) just an extremely overweight woman in bad health.

Talks-too-loudly-on-the phone-guy is just oblivious and even tries to tone it down, he just doesn’t realize how loud he is, he’s not rude. And the people eating chips don’t know that there is someone in class who has difficulty focusing and dealing with noise. (as I said in my earlier post, it’s an accepted practice at our university, except of course in the case of lab classes, or PE classes and the like).

How do those same students, those that are so sensitive to normal noises, manage to study and do homework back at the dorms? From what my coworkers say (I went to college much later in life, as a single parent and had my own place), dorms were an absolute hell of noise pollution.

Getting all hypersensitive and bent out of shape about a package of chips (likely snagged from a vending machine, due to extreme lack of time and great work ethics on the part of the student, as someone else said) is about a half a step up from whining “Mooo Hoom, he’s LOOKING at me!!!”

And really, is it as if everyone in the entire class is snarfing down chips for the entire class? Good grief.

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[QUOTE=CanvasShoes]

How do those same students, those that are so sensitive to normal noises, manage to study and do homework back at the dorms?
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You go to the study room or library if you need peace and quiet for studying. There’s a reason study rooms were almost always full in my school–it’s because most students needed peace and quiet for studying. I’m actually one of those that likes background noise, but I agree with posters who prefer quiet in the classroom, and I do think school & work are two very different environments with different expectations.

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[QUOTE=CanvasShoes]
First off, I don’t have a dog in the “eating chips or other noisy foods in class” fight. I’m not a chip fan. But I can understand and sympathize with how a hardworking student might have to resort to vending machine food.
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And many alternatives to chips are available in the vending machines on campus, as I pointed out before. I have to resort to handfuls of nuts and the like from the campus store. I usually make the point of snarfing the whole thing down before class starts, however.

It’s people being people when it’s in certain settings. If you’re in a project meeting, I bet you don’t reach for the Funyuns.

They are. At work, I can comfortably tune anything out on my iPod, not to mention an awful lot can get absorbed in the background noise of the cubicle farm.

At school, I am straining to hear a single person talking in a huge room of 300 people. It’s not the same thing.

I have my own place; I actually study often at home or at my husband’s law school, where people seem to have a fucking clue.

And posting several lengthy posts to a thread on this topic while claiming “not to have a dog in this fight” is what, exactly? Why are you “hypersensitive” to my complaint?
Also, why have you not read the fucking thread, evidently? I sympathize greatly with students that don’t have a lot of time. I sure as fuck don’t have any myself when I take 18 units, commute as far as I do (about 200 miles a day, all told), and have to maintain a household and a marriage on top of it. Somehow though I manage to find time to not eat in class, or find the manners to eat (or drink, more usually) something unobtrusive if I absolutely must in class - a rarity.

Trying to paint me as some hypersensitive idiot and everyone else in my class as perfect angels of work ethic is fucking ridiculous. I work harder than anyone else I know. I dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and I busted my fucking ass to be at UCLA at the grand old age of 26. I commute 200 miles a day to be in class, yet I am in class on time almost always (the 405 being what it is, I make no guarantees) and manage to keep my food problems contained. Blow your rhetoric out your rusty shithole of a mouth.