Overcoming Anti-Social Classrooms

Ah, high school classroom, how I miss you. Paper airplanes flying through the air and not a single ounce of respect for the authoritarian, tyrannical teacher. It was more than a place where teachers disseminated highly regimented and innocuous district required material. It was a place where you made your best friends.

A bad class forged the best of friendships. The best friend I ever made was in a class that assigned collages and scrapbooks as major assignments, and through that type of hazing process in my high school classroom fraternity we formed a lifelong friendship.

But now, in college, it takes more than a paper airplane to the head to make friends. Sure, you may smile and wave to the guy or girl that sits next to you in class, but chances are your best friends are from the dorms, greek life, co-ops, your apartment building, or clubs.

Class, once a buzzing social hub, is now a social wasteland. There are some extremely disheartening reasons.

First of all, it is no longer cool to be disruptive by incessantly talking while the poor teacher tries to do their job. In high school you’d get sent to the principal, which was an honorable accomplishment. Nowadays you are seen as obnoxious for acting, well, obnoxiously. You will no longer receive the satisfaction from agitating your teacher and gaining the respect of your classmates, because it just won’t be tolerated. The high school teacher is a symbol of oppression and acting defiantly is noble, whereas the college professor is to be revered. (Though this is not to say there is no obnoxiousness going down in college classes.)

People are inextricably attached to their phones, taking every opportunity to avoid awkward eye contact, or even worse, the prospect of having to make small talk. Also, lecture halls look like checkerboards with all the seats left empty because no one wants to sit next to each other. I think people need to realize sitting yourself next to a stranger is not weird. All it is is a simple gesture of the flesh human interaction, something that is so fleeting in today’s society.

Of course everyone dislikes awkward interactions, and pulling out your phone or leaving two seats in between you and someone who for all you know could be your future spouse is the easy way out of momentary discomfort. It was different in high school, where you more or less knew everyone in your class so there was no need to be constantly avoiding these interactions.

Something needs to be done about this.

Now, I realize that perhaps I gave my poor underpaid public servant high school teachers a little too hard of a time back in the day and that behaving like a jackass is probably not the best way to solve the problem of antisocial classrooms. Instead, I propose a compromise.

Go into class and sit next to someone. Don’t be afraid. They don’t have cooties. Strike up a conversation in the ten minute window between real time and Berkeley time before class starts. No matter what, don’t look at your phone. And then I guess you should probably shut up when the class actually starts. If you two hit it off then sit together the next class, and with any luck a friendship will form. And hey, before you know it you may be going from chatting in a lecture hall to becoming lifelong friends.