Pretend you are in your last lecture of the day. Your professor has said that once they
finish the lecture slides, they’ll let you out early. Good! You have an hour-long commute home and another four hours of homework afterwards due at midnight.
So what happens? Some jerk starts asking question after question, each of them being either redundant or plain asinine. All they seem to be doing is eating up time to make the lecture last as long as possible. But are their questions really all that foolish and uncalled for?
Well, yes and no. To that individual, those questions could be a matter of academic life and death. They might need that odd comparative story they are telling to be able to place the material into a context they better understand, or they might really need that confirmation about what you just learned. Maybe they can’t hear the professor and they simply need them to repeat themselves.
Regardless, they need it. They wouldn’t brave the animosity of their fellow students — who they know they’re inconveniencing — without good reason. They need their questions answered. Chances are, someone else has the same queries and is just too nervous to speak up. You’re all paying for this content, so you may as well get your money’s worth.
But there comes a flip side to this — to everyone who does understand what’s going on, this individual is causing a disservice. You have places to be, things to do, and you completely understand what the professor was saying.
At some level, you have to tolerate questions others pose that you don’t have. That’s OK, and more often than not, the material will be more ingrained in your memory because of it. However, there is also a burden of time that needs to come when asking basic or unnecessary questions.
As a student, you are expected to pay attention in lecture and have a general idea of what’s going on. If you’re meeting that expectation, good! If you aren’t, then understand that you’re interrupting and extending the class by asking these questions. If you do need to interrupt a lecture with questions, please just be brief and respect your peers’ time.
