With the availability and accessibility of technology today, it is virtually impossible to be disconnected from the outside world. Wireless Internet, digital cable, and cell phones seem to tune people more into technology than into each other. They are always in contact, always available, and always in the know.
Cell phones are now so popular that Boston College decided to cancel its long distance phone service in the dorms because usage dropped from 70 percent to about 7 percent. Nobody pays for a long distance phone service when it is available through the cell phone plan free of charge. And everyone has a cell phone. Now the cell phone epidemic has spread to the classroom.
At least once a day, somebody's cell phone goes off during one of my classes. It's obnoxious. It's not that hard to remember to turn off your cell phone or switch it to silent before class. Letting your phone ring during class is inexcusable, especially when it happens to you more than once. It is disrespectful to the professor and annoying to the rest of the class.
I've also seen people answer their phones during class and whisper to the caller that they'll have to call them back. My friend told me that a few days ago in one of her classes, somebody actually answered his phone inside the classroom, said hello and then got up and walked out in the hallway to continue the conversation. That's ridiculous. Is 50 minutes really too long to be out of the loop?
It is even more annoying when people think they are being slick by setting their phones on vibrate. Vibration is still noise! Maybe the teacher can't hear it but everyone sitting nearby can and it is really irritating. Last semester, during a final, the guy sitting next to me left his phone on vibrate for the test and it went off at least six times, making it impossible for me to concentrate.
But will it ever end and how much is too much? Where is this trend going? Jerry Seinfeld once suggested that smells will replace ring tones as the indication that someone is trying to reach you.
Even worse than the ringing phone is the text messaging. In practically every class I see people unabashedly typing away on their phones, sending messages, receiving them, and replying. Sometimes students even do this while sitting in the front row, right in front of the professors, not even trying to conceal the fact that they are clearly not paying attention but have more important matters to tend to.
At first I thought people kept their phones on top of their desks in order to see the clock to keep track of how many more painful minutes they had to listen to a lecture about the ins and outs of Yugoslavian politics. Now I know that they were just waiting for the "new message" sign to pop up on the screen.
Not only is it rude, but it's distracting to sit next to someone who spends the whole class tapping away on their keypad. You know who I'm talking about, just take a look around your classroom today and I guarantee you'll see it: people typing away on their phones, sending and receiving messages, making contact with the outside world.
It's awful, pathetic actually, that some people think they are too cool to turn off their cell phones and disconnect themselves for 50 minutes. Sometimes it's nice to be unavailable, knowing that nobody can reach you, even when you're not in class.
While people used to tune out during class and fall asleep in the back of the room, more and more people are now tuning in inside the classroom and typing away on all sorts of wireless devices throughout the course of the 50 minute period. Just like the "netiquette" rules for the Internet, there should be an etiquette guide for cell phone usage and it should explicitly forbid using them during class.
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