The Great Lecture Takeover of 2010

In my Tuesday night class there is a girl who, bless her heart, has problem with sharing too much information. For example, a few weeks ago we learned that she has trouble keeping jobs because she has trouble with authority, which stems from issues with her dad. This fun fact about her had nothing to do with what we were talking about, and I'm not sure we needed to know about her issues with her dad. Comments like these happen at least every class period, and usually include 5 minutes of back story.

Well, last week the professor asked for a volunteer to write on the board. She enthusiastically volunteered (which I was grateful for because I hate volunteering). We were discussion Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and the girl was supposed to draw the hierarchy, and then right down our comments. Well it didn't take long before she not only had the hierarchy drawn on the board and our comments written. She then proceeded to draw lines and arrows and cross things out and make connections to concepts that had nothing to do with needs theory and soon the board looked like a mad scientist's board. It got to the point where my professor stopped talking, and sat down with the class and just watch her go. That's right, she took over the lecture, and made a fool of herself as she tried to act smarter than she is. I'm not saying she's stupid, but there is a reason we are taking this class: we don't know everything.

My professor is a great guy and really smart in knowing when to let us explore idea's, and when he needs to control the discussion, so he didn't let this girl lecture for long. I just thought it was really funny that this first semester grad student, who never says anything really on topic took over the lecture. I wish you could have been there. I sit in the back of the room and when she took over the lecture it was funny to see all the heads turn away from the board with looks on their faces like "Oh my gosh, is she really doing this?". It was a good laugh.

And that is the Great Lecture Takeover of 2010. I hope it doesn't happen again.

Well, I need to get back to writing a paper. I have major writers block so I decided to blog. Too bad papers don't write themselves.