THE 5 PEOPLE THAT WILL BE IN YOUR CLASS

Last time I was outside, I realized that it is summer. I have three things to say about this:

1. It is hot.

2. I am hot (speaking temperature-ly...yes, that is a word). 

3. My classes are smaller.

Why is this last item of particular interest? I don't know. The end.

Just kidding. Taking spring and summer classes, at least at my institution of learning, means that not only is the course material condensed into half the time, but the amount of people is condensed as well. Being one out of fifteen students in a class is quite a surreal experience after existing as less than one-hundredth of a class during Fall and Winter Semesters. But beyond that, having such a concentrated group of classmates in each of the four classes I've taken over the last few months has lead me to a theory that both freaks me out and entertains me. Ahem:

In every class you ever take, you will be able to identify five certain types of people, every time. And it's proportional. If your class has 100 people in it, the amount of people representing these personality types will increase as well. But they will always be there, and they will (almost) always drive you to the cliffs of insanity each class period. But hopefully by identifying them I will be able to prepare you for re-entrance into the world that is college, if you happen to be doing so this month. So read on, and feel free to totally agree with me. That's perfectly fine.

1. That one guy who does not realize how annoying he is.

Due to the fact that people tend to be different from one another...usually...this type comes in a variety of forms. For example- In my creative writing class, this archetype manifested itself in the form of a guy who prided himself in memorizing everyone's name by the second day of class, standing up every time a girl entered the room, and making it hard for many of us to differentiate between the sound of him making a comment and the image of over-sweet, sappy compliment honey coming out of his mouth every time he opened it. And in my Mythology class this term, which was a little larger, we had two of these types to compensate for that fact: one individual who liked to pop out all of these intense, obscure Greek words to brown-nose the professor, and another who had no idea what he was talking about but felt inclined to make a comment about anything and everything. Thanks, guys. Keep...keep being you. But not really. Please stop. And to everyone else, there's really nothing you can do about it. So just sit there and fight the urge to sharpen your pitchforks. 

You can, however, sharpen them for this one:

2. The girl with the whiny/condescending/nails-on-a-chalkboard voice who thinks everyone wants to hear it. All the time.

Maybe not. But sometimes I don't think offing one of these from society would be that bad of a thing to do. This type...oh my goodness. I just...I really hope no one reading this is one of these. I sincerely do. Because that means that everyone hates you, and I'm sorry. But really, no- we do not need or even want to hear your opinion on last night's reading. Or the study guide. Or stories about your life that supposedly connect to what we're talking about. We just don't. We don't care how intelligent you think you are. Also, I know this is surprising, but the rest of us aren't actually here to learn more about you or even just listen to you talk. I know, I know- with the title of the course being "Drawing," it's pretty misleading. 

3. The "experienced" older person.

I don't know when this became a thing, but apparently middle aged people suddenly are not ashamed to take classes alongside people less than half their age. Which is fine. More power to them. But you'd think it'd be one of those "They're more afraid of you than you are of them" things, with like, spiders and Bigfoot and stuff...and it's not. They are more than comfortable around young people. And they will assert their ostensible superiority whenever possible. Any phrase uttered by one of these types will begin with either "As a mother..." or "Back when I was young..." or "While simultaneously paying my bills, grocery shopping, changing a diaper, reading the newspaper, and altogether being more mature than everyone here..." It's great. The flip-side of this are the ones who have no idea what's going on. A man in my creative writing class who was pushing sixty kept asking questions about scansion and verifying what the professor was saying so many times that I almost had to get glasses because of the tension created by restraining myself from rolling my eyes.

4. The girl who constantly asks the professor what he/she wants.

Of all the types, this is most certainly the least tolerable. This type has the capacity to make me physically ill. Okay, not really, but it's close. This person only cares about their grade. That's it. When they leave the university, a piece of paper marked with A's will be all that they value. It's actually really sad, but dealing with their comments in class is torturous. In my drawing class, there was a girl who honestly could not come up with her own ideas and just run with them. She was constantly asking the professor what he wanted, what the rules were, etc. and the rest of us were like "we're just going to make art and make him like it." Her stress would literally stress me out. Then there was the girl in my writing class who would email the professor constantly, checking and double checking that she was doing the assignment correctly. LET YOURSELF GO, PEOPLE. And last but not least, we have the unfortunate epitome of this type manifested in my Mythology class a few weeks ago when our professor was speaking and a girl raised her hand and asked "so is that going to be on the test?"  There are no words.

And last, but certainly not least:

5. The quiet girl who is actually really cool.

Befriending these particular people has become one of my very favorite things to do. In my writing class, it was the tall Art History major that I absolutely loved sitting by, in my drawing class it was the girl with awesome glasses who I discovered shared an affinity for nail polish comparable to my own, and in Mythology it was the shy freshman girl who was always on Pinterest in front of me. They are easy to dismiss initially, but coming from a girl who typically tends to be reserved as well, look past their seemingly unapproachable exteriors and talk to them. Because they will make surviving the rest of the aforementioned personalities in your class a whole heck of a lot easier.