Partly Cloudy, 64°
Piping up for the very first time in her anthropology lecture this week, freshman Jolie Hartman silently wondered if her polite “bless you” to a classmate would count towards class participation. As the spring semester barrels forward, Hartman has taken astute notice of the participation requirement for ANTH100 and hopes her comment warrants some credit.
“I know it wasn’t exactly relevant to the course material,” Hartman said of the contribution, “but the professor looked my way. She had an expression that was like ‘hey, what a nice, well-mannered student.’ And the people around me definitely heard it. The guy who sneezed even said ‘thanks.’ I feel like I really represented myself well and provided some depth to our lecture, and isn’t that what professors are looking for?”
“I suppose I could have said it a little louder,” Hartman continued, “but at the end of the day it seemed like a nice, social volume. I barely even thought about it. Off-the-cuff remarks like these are what spark enriching conversations, right? Right?”
At press time, Hartman was validating a classmate’s point with an emphatic nod.
