absolutangel64

In an academic setting, raising your hand means one of two things:

1. You have to ask a question, or

2. You want to answer a question.

Everyone is able to predict what your raised hand means before you even open your mouth: if the professor has asked a question, raising your hand means you have an answer; if the professor has not asked a question—i.e., he is just lecturing—your raised hand means you want to ask something.

Considering how basic this is, it is surprising how many people have managed to be annoying even when doing something as simple as asking or answering a question. And their annoyingness results from a bad habit all of them share: beginning every question or answer with an unnecessary preface no one wants to hear.

    I. Annoying Question Prefacing

As I said, there are only two reasons why a person would raise his or her hand: you either want to ask or answer a question. There isn’t a third option here…so why, then, do so many people feel the need to preface their question with this:

Thank you for clarifying that! This whole time I was thinking you raised your hand because you were going to strip down naked and let us beat you with sticks of salami, or that you wanted to draw our attention to the huge pimple on your right cheek that had somehow exploded in the middle of class. I would never have guessed that when you raised your hand you wanted to ask a question!

I’ll bet you’re also someone who writes “loves to laugh” on an “e-Harmony” or “Match.com” application since, you know, most people hate laughing.

Oh, and I really love how some students try to avoid sounding lame by prefacing with “quick question” instead of “I have a question.” Right, because reassuring everyone that you weren’t going to ask a slow question makes a world of difference.

Here’s a question for you: instead of telling us the obvious, why don’t you just ask the freaking question?

    II. Annoying Answer Prefacing

There is a guy in my class who always begins all of his answers with: “I’m not sure if this is correct, but I’m going to give it a reasonable shot…but I might be wrong because I’m not sure, but I think…” He always gives this speech before answering a professor’s question, and then finishes up with, “but I might be wrong.”

I know he spews this crap as a way to protect himself from embarrassment in case his response turns out to be incorrect, but if he really thought his answer was that bad then he shouldn’t have volunteered. Personally, unless I’m 100% sure I know the answer, I won’t raise my hand. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll get any points for blabbing nonsense that doesn’t contribute to the class discussion. If professors did base participation on quantity instead of quality, then I’d be raising my hand at every chance I got:

It’s too bad that’s just not the way participation points are awarded.

To be fair, the guy’s answers are always correct—but, after hearing his speech about how unsure he is, I just want to beat him over the head with a sock full of quarters while screaming, “Homie don’t play that! Grow a pair!” If someone is questioning the existence of your testicles because you can’t answer a question without being annoying, then you seriously suck total ass.