Hello, my name is Nicole. I’m in my fourth year. There’s nothing particularly interesting about me. My major is “very little patience for this activity,” with a minor in “let’s just start the lecture already.”
I get that the first week of classes can be a bit of a slow start for students and instructors alike. No one particularly wants to jump right into things after those cozy few weeks of relative freedom from academia. I can even sort of understand the logic behind doing a round robin of all the names in the class, simply as a warm-up exercise to make sure that no one has completely forgotten how to interact with other humans while they’ve been away.
But do we really need to get into groups and interview a complete stranger about their fourth cousin’s cat Myrtle? Are the individual presentations on student biographies strictly necessary? Could we not just give our names and majors and go home an hour early with the time we save?
Or better yet, could we skip the introductions altogether? It’s not a very organic way to meet or get to know someone, and I’m sure a solid half of the students introducing themselves are either going to drop the course or vanish before the midterm anyway.
