Is it just me, or is there always a “that guy” in every class at DVC? “That guy” doesn’t even have to be male, but they always have to be annoying.

“That guy” is the person who inevitably sits in the front row and either makes a comment about everything the teacher says or answers every question, in a display of superiority over the other students in the room. They’re that guy you always complain about. This behavior is part brown-nosing, part pretension, and all horrible. How do I know this mindset so well?

Well, the other day I discovered I was “that guy.” I was in one of my classes and I kept raising my hand for every question to the point where the teacher would look at me and note that she wanted to hear from other people. An awkward silence followed for about twenty seconds before the teacher called on me.

However, I comforted myself over this dark realization by noting that, unlike other people like me, I at least didn’t constantly offer my opinion unless I was asked for it. In some of my classes, that guy will just volunteer their thoughts on everything.

The absolute worst form of this I’ve seen was this woman in a class I had a year ago. She had this tendency to cut off the professor by just barking out any question she had on the material. Not only did this clearly annoy the professor, but it also made me jump due to her horrendously loud voice. It felt like being stabbed in the ear with a rusty knife. I was on edge.

I asked my friend who goes to UC San Diego about this, and he said that it doesn’t happen in the lecture halls. This phenomenon seems to be the drawback of having smaller classes. I behaved like this in some of my similarly sized classes in high school, but I feel like it’s different at DVC because most of your classmates are strangers. It’s more akin to showing off.

“Those guys” are really annoying, but it’s not something that can just be turned off. I also don’t think that this is a big enough problem to merit increasing class sizes to drown them out.  This is just something you have to accept, and on behalf of all of “those guys,” I apologize.