It's 10:07 a.m., five minutes into your English history lecture and that girl walks in and sits next to you, again. The reason you think of her as that girl is not because she's impeccably groomed on a Monday or that she walks in late and shuffles through her notebook, drowning out the already faint mumblings of the professor; it's because every class, right next to you, she thinks its fine to chow down on whatever munchies she's brought for breakfast.
Being a senior, I have finally come to terms with the fact that eating in class has become close to acceptable. I've had friends do it. I might have even done it myself in my naive days of underclassmen-hood. I won't object to the practice based on the blatant disrespect it shows for teachers — students who are stuffing their faces are hardly the attentive audience a professor strives for — or for the utter lack of manners it demonstrates. No, what I can't comprehend is how people don't realize just how completely unattractive eating in class makes them.
Eating is inherently an unappealing procedure. Food goes in, gets chomped about for a bit with some slobbering, and hopefully swallowed without too many driblets escaping. Normally this happens in the company of noise and many other people eating. In class, you get a silent amphitheater to showcase how you chew your cud. An unwilling audience gets to witness the slow, but painfully loud opening of your food packaging (as if in some show of trying not to disturb your captive victims), the drawn-out munching of your energy bar, and the final ingestion. Your classmates breathe a sigh of relief, but no! You still have Captain Crunch to finish. Everyone must then endure your entire "complete and healthy breakfast."
For half of the class, this is an annoyance to be borne as they try to focus on the droning wisdom imparted behind your cacophony of feasting. For the other half, it is an unbearable reminder of the fact that they are dying of famine, having woken up three minutes before class and being willing to wait another forty minutes before their own repast. Goodness knows what the poor professor is thinking, trying to navigate through rhetorical flourishes while suffering the vision of the contents of your mouth.
But alas, it is not for me to say where and when the other members of this campus can and cannot eat. My only sad consolation is that girl, trumpeting her dependence on outside opinion by her manicured fingernails and preppy pink polo, has destroyed all semblance of good looks by subjecting her entire class to the racket of her consumption. I simply hope that others will learn from her sad example: Eating in class is the ultimate beauty faux-pas.
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