I have a confession to make. I like to talk. In class. A lot.

I can’t help it — I’ve been that way since I was 6 and I don’t see it changing any time soon.

Talking in class is simultaneously condoned and damned.

Once, while visiting a professor at office hours, I apologized for talking so much in her class. She gave me the warning that if she didn’t want to hear from me she wouldn’t call on me, a day which inevitably comes in all my classes. The day that they stop calling on me is the day I start beating myself up for talking too much; for being too opinionated and enthusiastic; for not hanging back and listening to my fellow classmates or being a fly on the wall.

Being the talker, at least to me, doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in what my classmates have to say.  I am, because it opens up possibilities I might not have considered and leads to a discussion-based class, which I personally find more fulfilling. What I cannot stand is the class where no one talks, where the professor drones on and on to fill up the emptiness of the classroom until you feel like any comments you might make are unwelcome or, worse, unnecessary.

My participation habit has earned me several nicknames over the years: Brainiac, Answering Machine, Dictionary and so on. They are well-deserved, and when they were bestowed upon me I took them as the insults they were intended to be. How dare I be excited about subjects that I love? Who was I to venture forth an opinion? Didn’t I know it was crass to be smart and opinionated and vocal? 

As I got older, I questioned this characterization. I’m me, and I have opinions. That’s why I write opinion pieces, after all. You’re you, and you have your opinions — I have to live with that even when I disagree. I think that we as a nation, a people, and a group of students are far too timid in venturing forth our opinions because having an opinion when you aren’t an “expert” is construed as wrong. We worry about sounding stupid, being wrong, or offending others with our honesty. This is a self-defeating thought because it undermines the cause of education. We’re all here to learn, to make mistakes, and on occasion that means putting your foot in your mouth, taking a risk and failing or just plain finding out the limits of your own knowledge. 

I envision a world where everyone talks in class, and I don’t think it would take much to get there. In one of my favorite classes this quarter that world is already a reality! It is a world where I can believe that college students are not just wasting $20,000 of their parents’ money on booze and movies. They’re learning, they have passions and ambitions, they are following their dreams — that’s the kind of world I want to live in.