That’s it. Just five more minutes, and you’ll be out of that one class you can’t stand. You’re slumped over in your seat with your hand propping your head up as you listen to the professor with just one ear. Then you glance at that clock for probably the 30th time during the class and breathe a sigh of relief as you see that your class will end in just five minutes. So you straighten up in your seat. You begin to put your belongings away one at a time—first your notebook then your pen then your water bottle.
Your professor is still lecturing as you start packing up, and once the person next to you notices what you’re doing, it’s likely that they’ll begin to do the same. Then another person will follow suit, then another, until you can barely hear the professor’s voice over the rustling of coats and the unzipping of backpacks. At this point, your professor will probably get irritated and demand that everyone stops packing up because “there’s still five more minutes in class!”To which many students will roll their eyes and grumble to one another.
“Nobody’s listening.”
“Seriously? We’ve been here for over an hour; five more minutes won’t make a difference.”
“Just let us go already.”
I’ll be the first person to admit that I appreciate when my professors let class out early, whether it’s by five minutes or a half hour. But oftentimes, this is not the case. I think we’ve all had professors that will even resort to keeping us a few minutes late (and therefore causing us to run to make it on time to our next class).
It’s not like we don’t have respect for our professors. We’ve paid attention for an hour or longer, so it’s natural that at this point, all we want to do is get out of that room. And when our professor tells us to pay attention, we’re so annoyed that most of us don’t listen at all for those last five minutes.
The good news is there’s a solution for this: don’t pack up early. If we don’t pack up before we’re dismissed, we're able to take in as much information as possible without irritating our professor. Let’s be honest, having a professor yelling at you to stop packing up doesn’t make you like them any more. So if we stop packing up early, we can avoid distracting other students as well as the professor. Perhaps we’ll even hear something that draws our interest and makes us enjoy the class more.
The bad news is that nobody will stop doing this. We’re college students. For most of our high school careers and even earlier we were told that college students were always busy. And that’s true. So if we ever do pack up early, there’s always a reason for it. We’re trying to make it to our next class on time. We’re going straight from class to work. We’re hungry and the dining hall closes in 15 minutes. We really need to go to the bathroom. The list goes on and on.
There are always going to be disruptions in class, but few are more distracting than hearing someone three rows behind you zip up a bag. No matter how busy your schedule may be, it’s likely that at least one other person in the room has an even busier day than you. Just remember that everyone in there (except the professor) is paying to learn this information, and when you start packing up early, you’re distracting the entire class. Make sure you’re making the most out of your money. After all, it’s only five more minutes!
