I had it up to my eyeballs in Math class yesterday. Living with this illness and dealing with the fog is bad enough. But when I sit in class, in the front of the room, and can’t hear the professor because of conversations on the other side of the room… Well, that was it.

There is a group of women who sit on the far side of the room. Every Monday and Wednesday night they converse among themselves as if Math class isn’t happening around them. The professor sometimes raises his voice and sometimes gives them looks, but he never asks them to quiet down. It was especially bad last night- at least for me. I was foggy and was having trouble focusing because of the chatter. At one point one of the women actually stood up to illustrate a point she was making to the other women. It was unbelievably disrespectful, not only to the professor but to those of us who were paying $300 per credit hour to attend the class.

After class I waited for everyone to leave. Then I spoke with the professor. I explained to him my condition and why it’s difficult for me to concentrate on the lesson when there’s so much noise coming from the other side of the class. He seemed to understand and said we could work out a hand signal when it was getting too loud over there. That miffed me a little. I told him that I didn’t want special treatment for my condition, just some consideration for someone paying to attend the class. I also told him that other people felt the same about what was going on over there. That was a little white lie as I have no idea if others get just as annoyed, but it did help my cause. We talked for about half an hour and he agreed to control the class a little better. I’m satisfied with that. I just want to learn. That’s why I’m there, afterall.

The funny thing about these women is they’ll chatter all through a discussion and then ask redundant questions when they realize where we’re at. After the prof goes through an equation, explains what he’s doing, and gets the answer, one of the women will pipe up “So, how’d you get that answer?” Lovely. Just lovely. The man is too nice to say “You’d know if you shut your trap and paid attention” so he goes through the whole thing again. Which has put us 3 chapters behind. What a pain.

My first semester I took Intro to Business and there was a similar situation the first day of that class. A group of younger people were sitting in the back talking among themselves, oblivious to the lecture. That prof stopped the lecture, walked to the back of the room and said “I would love to hold up the rest of the class for your benefit, but they’ve paid money to be here. If you can’t quiet down, I suggest you withdrawl from the course, because the next time you interrupt you’re losing class points.” And that was the end of that. My psych professor, too, makes sure that the class stays focused and respectful. He simply asks “Can you hear me back there?” when someone starts talking too loud. I really like that approach.

Hopefully my math professor will show some spine next week. I’m sure I’ll be the class pariah for taking away all the fun. I don’t care though. Class time is not the time to be talking about idiot husbands and barfing dogs. I don’t think they should even be in that class if they can’t take it seriously. And I really hate to think what they’ll be like when they finally do get their nursing degrees.