How to Talk to Your Teacher, I would buy that book. How to Talk to Your Student, I would buy my teachers that book. Nowadays, we as students are held to higher standards because we have been given resources and opportunities that were non-existent during the extensive era labeled (B.Y.W.B.) Before You Were Born. We now have access to all types of information and yet classes can still be a glass maze that you can’t seem to find your way out of. What’s wrong? You take notes, you study, and yet nothing sticks, nothing makes sense. You ask a classmate and they are equally confused, but the clear option many forego is the teacher.
Finally at last conformity rears it head, we as a body of students have a deep set of hidden customs that no one speaks of but almost everyone follows: don’t stand out, don’t draw unwanted attention to yourself, don’t make yourself look stupid. For those of us who don’t particularly enjoy being ridiculed for our cluelessness, the teacher could fly through their lesson and even if you somehow managed to miss all of it or you really tried to listen but your comprehension skills had apparently left the building, raising your hand, interrupting the lecture, and forcing the furiously scribbling hands to pause is viewed as a massive disturbance.
Speaking out has become both the easiest and the hardest action to commit in a room full of peers simply because it requires you to lift yourself out of your mental cubicle and break the droning quiet of writing that rarely fills a classroom or that tiring synced wave of frustration, stress, and boredom everyone seems to share. But just like anything else, once you do something for the first time it gets a little easier to do it again, and when you begin to frequently pester the lecturer to clarify for your notes (we all know that kind of notes some people take that would make every perfectionist person very happy), it can be seen as an annoying review or an unnecessary infraction of your promised education. It really just depends on what type of half glass person you are.
I personally feel that if you were to raise your hand to ask a question for clarification it would benefit the class more, as opposed to interrupting simply to speak about one’s self-reflection and to insert personal anecdotes that no one asked for, cares to know, and/or are completely irrelevant to the class. The better term for this occurrence would be ‘side track’ which we can all agree can happen quite frequently in classes when everyone is in a particularly chatty mood.
Alright, before I become a hypocrite I want to lastly and conclusively ask you... How many times have you been told, “Figure it out,” “Ask a friend,” “Look it up?” Now in comparison, how many times have you been asked/told, “Ask me,” “I’ll help you,” “What are you having trouble with?” It isn’t truly a mystery why people are hesitant to be heard, why people are confused but do not say a word, why people do not speak unless spoken to. And in the end, their seemingly most accessible resource appears to have the words, “Blocked,” “Look smart,” blinking on it in bright lights as they repetitively attempt to press refresh.
Side Note: to moderately avoid the reader’s confusion, the targeted audience is students, and at the end, I metaphorically compared a blocked website to an intimidating teacher.
