Dear Editor,I wish to express my appreciation to your staff writer Sam Smith for his candid article on the various ways that students annoy one another in class.

I wish to echo his discontent.

As a professor, there are few things more aggravating than students who have no regard for the fact that they are one in a room full of students who are paying for the privilege to receive an education.

Often, I find that students end up feeling disconnected from their educational experience because inconsiderate students are distractions in the learning environment or because, as Sam calls them, the “windbags” usurp a significant amount of class time.

As a professor, I have a difficult time dealing with such students.

On the one hand, I feel that it is important for me to encourage every student to have a satisfying learning experience, even if that means over-participating.

On the other hand, I feel that certain students should be stifled in order to protect the right to a satisfying educational experience for the majority of my students.

In the end, I don’t manage troublesome students well because I can’t figure out how to respectfully hush one student in the interest of 100 students.

In my ideal world, students would police themselves.

They would be conscientious of all students’ right to have an engaging, active, participatory educational experience.

This may mean that students choose not to answer a question they have the answer to or an opinion about, or talking over classmates.

Maybe that means that a student may not participate as passionately as he or she may desire.

I think that a little bit of self-monitoring and impulse control would go a long way to building a community of learners in every class that all students are able to feel a part of if they so desire.

-Carrie Oliveira

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