1 November 2011

Respect

I think that in many ways respect is an abstract concept nowadays. Political correctness has blurred the borders. I thought that my sister's boyfriend made a very good point recently when he posted a rantlet on facebook about using 'Miss' and 'Sir' as terms of respect and how he thinks that some of that is lost when you reach higher education and are able to call your teachers/lecturers by their first names. I think that he's right. They're not our equals, as using their first name implies, they are our superiors, they know more than us and are trying to pass that on.

This point was raised in my mind during several lectures I've had over the past week where the lecturer has had to tell people who were talking to stop, and in one case gave up and ended the lecture. Personally at that point I was disappointed as I was sincerely interested in what he had been trying to say. However it hadn't been a small portion of the lecture group who had been talking over him.

I can understand going to a lecture and getting bored, it's happened to me on more than one occasion, but I still can't understand how you can be so disrespectful and start talking over the lecturer. If someone doesn't want to listen to a lecture that in my opinion is fine, it doesn't bother me... as long as they ignore what's being said quietly. At that point they're going to probably fail anyway but I'm paying to be there as are many others who actually want to learn. It becomes a point of disrespect to all of us as well.

Another point of disrespect I've come across since being here is noise. People who get drunk tend to get louder, I get that. But when it's 3 in the morning and you're trying to sleep because you need to get up in about 3 hours, the last thing you want to hear is thudding, thumping and shouting. I get a little bit angry that people can't understand this basic courtesy.

And finally it's food. I think, having paid for it's use, we should all be able to leave food in the communal areas without having to think about whether we'll go back to it and find that it's been eaten. We should be able to eat what we want in the communal areas without people looking down their nose at us for our choice of food, making themselves seem superior, or even trying to put us off our food.

Rowen

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