Whenever I left high school I decided to head to a community college for the first two years of my higher education. I went to Bevill State-Jasper and had a blast while I was there. After those two years I made my way up to UNA, where I graduated in the summer of 2011.

One major difference that I noticed between community college and the four-year university was student apathy towards classes. I believe it is worse at UNA than at the smaller school I attended. I heard the usual about students skipping class, not studying or doing the reading, etc., but I was guilty of these things just as much as other people. This also happened at Bevill State, so it was nothing new.

The real difference lay in the amount of respect shown to teachers between the two schools. The classes at Bevill State had just as many students in them as most classes at UNA, especially upper-level classes. However, I never saw some of the lack of disrespect at Bevill State for teachers as I did at UNA.

I have two examples and I am not going to name names, mostly for anonymity and the fact that I do not know their names. The first person seemed to be a talker. He sat next to a friend of his in one particular class and they tended to have a lot to talk about.

In one class this guy decided that what he and his friend were talking about was more important than listening to the professor’s lecture. This person continued to talk to his friend for several minutes while sitting no more than fifteen feet away from the instructor. Not only was this guy not paying attention, he got a double bonus for rudeness because he was making it difficult for me to pay attention. I am not OCD but when someone in a class was talking over the teacher, I couldn’t pay attention as well as I normally could.

The next guy on my list of people that made me angry was a real winner as far as school went. The class I had the displeasure of sharing with that guy was another lecture-style class setting. I had been told that if one did not pay attention in this class, he or she would generally not do well on the tests. If this was true, and if karma exists in any way, this jerk would fail everything in the class.

I never once saw this guy take the time or make the effort to take a single note. In one class he did not even bring a scrap of paper or anything to write with. No, he just sat in the class for the entire 50 minutes texting on his phone or playing games on his iPod. It bothered me that this guy had absolutely no respect for the professor, and again I found this guy’s actions distracting.

The moral of this rant is that people come to school to learn, and even though one person does not care about what is being said, that does not give them the right to disrespect teachers and distract others. Furthermore, the teachers at our country’s institution worked hard to get where they are, so have the decency to show them a little courtesy and respect.