People watching; many are guilty of it, but not everyone wants to admit it. Whether you are at work, at the mall, walking through the park, or sitting in class, it tends to happen. You begin to form opinions of others without speaking a single word to them.
This article is not a matter of what is right and what is wrong, but simply what occurs often in daily life. As I scan the room while writing this article, I see the student that continuously perceives social media as a priority over note taking. I see the student that lacks sleep and uses class time as nap time. I even see the overly focused individual who is fixated on the PowerPoint slides and blind to the surrounding environment. Hell, I admittedly am using class time to write my Odyssey article as a means of making up for a lackluster presentation. We are all guilty of being sidetracked. People watching allows us to not only analyze the surrounding world but also ourselves.
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I am a strong believer of the fact that people can be dynamic as they move from class to class, semester to semester, so on and so forth. Someone may be a "sleeper" if the class is at 8 a.m. and the material is extremely dry. That same individual could exhibit a high level of focus if they are taking an afternoon class with very interesting information. The kind of student that you are can always vary. This is true outside of class as well. I find that too much silence is unhealthy for me, and begin to lose focus.
I have never been the type of person to isolate myself in the corner of the library with absolute silence. I begin to be "too much in my own head" and ironically enough, I lose focus. I do some of my best work and best studying with a moderate noise level. It is usually pretty easy to point out the individuals with a substantial workload and not enough time to appropriately accommodate it. They are often doing homework, quizzes, or studying for another class while taking notes for the class that they are presently in. I do not think that there is such thing as "normal" student, because I do not think I have the right to classify anything as normal. Everyone has their own unique way of doing things.
The type of student you are is not limited to the fashion in which you attend class. It also consists of your actual fashion. On any given day, I see the student who comes to class in the same clothes that were slept in. I see the student who seemingly has spent more time getting dressed than there is sunlight in the day (a bit exaggerated, but you catch my drift). We cannot leave out those who have come from the gym or are going to the gym after; those who have come from work or are going to work after. The way a person dresses can tell you a lot about a person's daily life. It can be a major factor in the kind of student they are.
Being a student at Cleveland State University for the past three and a half years has shown me quite a bit about diversity. There are so many different people that you can encounter on any given day. I should make the point that this is not about judging a book by its cover; it is merely about how so many of us find our own ways of expressing who we are. Many of the people I encounter on campus are full-time students, and so the way in which we study is a major determinant of the way in which we live our life.
Briefly, I would like to state that I am someone who chooses to attend class in a cardigan, a button up shirt, jeans, and brown leather shoes. I make an effort to pay attention to my professors, and I also have a tendency to get sidetracked on my laptop as well. This is the kind of student I am and that is fine by me.
