WANTED: Class Participants

Shavonna Hinton

Over the course of my academic journey, I’ve always found that I’ve usually been one of the more vocal kids in class.  I was never afraid to raise my hand and answer a question or add commentary to a class discussion.  Recently, I’ve found myself speaking up even more than usual in many classes, and while this is beneficial to me, it’s also become a source of annoyance.  The reason why I speak up more and more is because it seems like less and less people are willing to offer up an opinion, leaving the class discussion to become very boring very quickly.

I’m not sure when exactly this shift to silence occurred but I do have a few theories as to why.  Being a freshman in a school like Binghamton can be intimidating at times.  Certainly it’s no Ivy League, but many of the students who go here are all still very intelligent, most of which were in the top 20% of their high school class.  Some student’s may have even been valedictorians.  However, I just don’t understand why in a room full of intelligent people, very few actually offer up opinions on anything.  I would expect that since there are so many bright students in the class, the conversations held would actually have some depth and meaning to them. Instead what I’ve observed is quite the opposite.

 

In a class of thirty something students, I was one of only five people to speak up.  What was even more annoying was that during the discussions that were held, there was usually only two people who dominated the conversation and very little if anything was added to the conversation as a whole.  Instead of providing insightful bits of commentary, the points they made were just frivolous complaints or ego filled counterarguments to the points that the other person made.

Obviously, there’s always going to be the people who feel the need to talk a bunch and there’s also going to be the people who don’t care or feel the need to say anything at all.  As for the people who lie somewhere in the middle, it’s my hope and wish that they might speak up more.  Just offer up a two or three sentence statement and it just makes the class seem more interactive.  If entertainment isn’t your concern think of it this way, if you can just say something insightful enough to get your professor to remember your name, that might be the difference between a B+ and an A in that class.

Until next time, keep it classy.