Box of Whine

Ok… what’s the deal with non-traditional students? Am I some magnet for the weirdest, most ‘out-there’ non-traditional students there are? I’m sitting in my late class tonight, minding my own business when this older-woman plops her stuff down beside me declaring, “Gosh! You sure have a lot to fill in on that crossword.” From that moment on I knew this was not going to be a fun three hours of class. After only a couple minutes of sitting there, my nose starts alerting me to her particular and unique stench. Sitting beside her, I felt like I could smell, and even taste, every cigarette this woman has ever smoked–every camel, every virginia slim… I can smell them all. But this olfactory invasion is not the end of my pre-geriatric problem, this woman starts to invade my space on the table. I was once blessed with enough space for my bottle of water, book, and pad of paper–but now have been reduced to my book under my paper, and the bottle of water on the floor, with Joe Camel encroaching even further. At once point, her notebook was opened onto my pad of paper, giving me access to only half of the lined sheet. She then proceeds to tell me how she has “outlawed red pens when correcting”, or how she did her class assessment on her son, or how she thinks the teacher made an error, or asking me how long I think correcting our papers will take, or continuously telling me that I’ve done a “excellent” job on writing my paper and that it must have been a lot of work writing it out by hand.

And we all know this type of person; she is the kind that asks every inane, obvious question about every possible thing. This is the type of person that takes the teacher’s saying of “we’ll get out early tonight” into a “I’m sorry we stayed a little past nine o’ clock.” And the worst offense of all, of this entire group–is saying “uh huh!” or “Ok!” or “Yep!” when the teacher says anything. The teacher could say, “You know, I really hate babies.” And at least two or three non-traditional students will say, “Yup.” and then you’ll get one who has a question about hating babies.

Now, I implore you, I don’t usually advocate discrimination–but there should be an age limit or at least an annoy-ability limit on the people they let back into college. For the sake of my sanity and nose, please, do not let these people in.

Well, this marks the end of my fifteen-minute break, I still have well over an hour left sitting by my new cacogenic friend.