*rips hair out*

You know those kids in a class who answer all the teacher's questions, who have always (apparently) done the reading, who always have an opinion about everything, and (most importantly) ask too many questions? Yeah, there are a few of these people in my World Geography class, and they are, to put it mildly, not my favorite people.

I will spare you all the boring details of my class (mostly because I don't remember what we talked about) and skip straight to about 3:20. 3:20 is two hours and twenty minutes after class started. Discussion is winding down. The professor seems like he has nothing else to say. I'm pretty sure he even said, "Well, if that's it..." like we could all pack up and leave. But NOOOOOO. One of those kids jumps in with some stupid question. Like, seriously? We've been sitting here for well over TWO HOURS. The professor is letting us leave early, and you want to stop that process?!! What is wrong with you?!! So of course, this question manages to distract the professor for another 15 minutes, meanwhile, all of us are still sitting there, pretending to care, when all we want to do is get out of class.

Finally, the professor finishes. Glory be!! We're done!! I can go ho.... "Knock knock." Oh, look. How joyful. There are two girls standing in the doorway. They want to talk to us about some sort of student political thing.
(not how the conversation actually went)
Two girls: Professor, can we talk to your class about our student political thing?
Professor: Of course. Here is my class. Take your time. They don't want to go home; it's not like they've been sitting here for 2 1/2 hours already.

So, naturally:
Two girls: [pass out shiny pamphlets] Blah blah blah... vote for us ... blah blah blah ... we're better than everyone else ... blah blah blah .... representation ... blah blah ... students .... [insert name of whatever they were talking about] ... blah blah .... important ..... So, if that's all
That kid: Wait, ... blah blah blah obnoxious and unnecessary question ... ?
Linda: [mentally strangles that kid]
Two girls: Blah blah blah .... vote ... blah blah ... better representation .... blah blah student important ... blah blah ... [10 more minutes]
Linda: *begins ripping hair out*

Okay, no, I didn't actually start ripping my hair out. I seriously considered it though. There were several things that really bothered me about this. 1) I was DONE with class. I wanted to go home, and they were keeping me from that. 2) They did not understand the concept that they were taking OUR time. At KU, students running for stuff talk to us all the time, but they're always careful to be quick about it if they're doing it during class time, or they make sure that they aren't taking away time we could be doing something else. These girls did not understand that concept. 3) The girls took long enough that the professor actually walked out. I had wanted to turn my paper in (yes, short paper #4 of 5 would have been turned in today), but I couldn't turn it in if he wasn't around. Now I feel obligated to go back and edit it and make it less horrible, although where I'm going to find time to do that between working on my presentation, my research paper, and my take-home test, I have no idea.

In better news, my Geography of Costa Rica class on Tuesday consisted of the teacher passing out the take home test. We got to leave after that, which I appreciated. I also think the test looks pretty doable, so I'm not quite as perturbed at all the jerks who hadn't studied last week.

In Cartography, my professor passed out some (reallly short, simple, easy) readings, and then we got in a circle and discussed (summarized) them. I managed to summarize mine without sounding like a complete idiot/failure. I was rather proud. Of course, of the 12-15 people in the class, only 4 showed up today. Two of us were on time. It was kind of cloudy and pretty rainy this morning, and it would appear that these two atmospherical phenomenon have the same effect on Ticos that blowing snow, two inches of ice, or sub-zero temperatures have on Americans. Dear Ticos: *rubs thumb and finger together* Do you know what this is? It's the world's smallest violin....

Also, everyone but me (all three of them) had to do their presentations today. I got to see what they did, and I got to hear her critiques of what they did. I feel like this gives me a slight advantage for next week, although I have a feeling that my rather weak Spanish skills are not going to help my grade on this.