Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Every college philosophy class has That Guy (or girl)

In every college philosophy course, there seems to be at least one student who's completely engrossed in the topic and ends up hijacking every class discussion. This may be true for every subject to an extent, but it seems especially relevant to philosophy.
In a course I once took, there was a monologue-prone man who always did this and kept making jokes about Georg Hegel that nobody understood. In another, there were two students who would always play conversational tug-of-war. One was a hilarious stoner whose mind was constantly blown by the ideas introduced (he was basically a real-life version of the Keanu Reeves meme--and no, I don't mean he actually was Keanu Reeves). The other was a conservative Christian fundamentalist who was offended by most topics and heavily disapproved of Stoner Dude's enthusiasm. They'd go back and forth all the time.
And in the first philosophy course I ever took, it was me. I totally was That Person Who Never Shut Up. So, my apologies to anyone who was there.