By Edward Lander
Disclaimer: While you may have encountered students like these in your courses, these sources and facts are, in fact, fictional.
Picture this: you’re attending a lecture when a smug classmate begins belting out a statement completely devoid of substance—filled with words like “dichotomy” and “presuppose”—leaving students confused and your professor with nothing to say but “…thank you for that comment?”
Sound familiar? According to a Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) think tank, “So You Think You Can Tank,” you might not be alone.
“I was sick and tired of these kids just talking out the wazoo”
In the think tank report titled “What on Earth Are You Talking About?: Blabbermouths in Canadian Universities,” researchers found that up to 75 per cent of discussions in classrooms are taken up by empty, derivative comments like these.
“What we’ve discovered is that precious class time is being wasted by students who can’t bear to go five minutes without hearing the sound of their own voice,” said head researcher Anita Diaz.
A professor herself, Diaz put the study into motion after experiencing the phenomenon in her own lectures.
“I was sick and tired of these kids just talking out the wazoo. I just had to get to the bottom of it,” she said.
The report features these types of students, placing them into multiple distinct—and yet equally irritating—categories.
“Researching these students was very difficult because they kept fighting with us”
The most common is the “Devil’s Advocate,” defined as someone who makes counterpoints for the sake of counterpoints.
Under the guise of a hypothetical disagreement, The Devil’s Advocate will send discussions in circles until their increasingly improbable critiques are satisfied–or the class ends.
“Researching these students was very difficult because they kept fighting with us,” added Diaz.
Following up is “The Piggybacker,” a student who simply regurgitates points made by their peers and passes them off as their own.
“Personally, I wanted to call this type ‘The Leech’ but the peer-reviewers said no,” said Diaz.
The last category is relatively self-explanatory. “The Suck-up,” or “The Kiss-ass,” is a student who makes empty and incessant comments for the sake of impressing their professor.
“Personally, I wanted to call this type ‘The Leech’ but the peer-reviewers said no”
“Sometimes it’s for the grade but more often than not they just want the prof to like them,” said Diaz.
The report has received backlash from some outspoken students who feel its results promote a non-academic mindset.
“We should be encouraging students to participate, not shun them,” wrote TMU student Ethan Yap in a blog post. “If I have a lot to say in class, maybe it’s because I’m smarter than everyone else.”
Yap’s post then went on for another 9,000 words about why he opposes the study.
Diaz and her team believes that students should focus more on course work and less on sounding “smart.”
“Give it up, the glazing’s gotta stop,” she said.
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