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It's happened to all of us. We feel the vibration of our phones in our pockets or notice them light up on our desks, informing us that we've just received text messages. We instantly feel inclined to read the message; while some students read and respond in a discreet way so that they appear to still be paying attention in class, others choose to reply while sitting on the front row or get up to answer a call that is not an emergency.
There are a select number of professors who do not care if you text in class. They figure if you want to miss out on something important to respond to a text that only read LOL then you will have to suffer the consequences alone. However, texting during class is a major pet peeve of many professors and they are taking note of how much you text even if they do not say anything about it to you personally. When it comes time to discuss your grade or any problems that you have been having in class, your professor may be unwilling to help if you spend most of their class texting than learning.
All professors understand that students have emergencies in which they must keep their phone on or even answer it during class but doing so excessively can earn you negative attention. You also run the risk of missing out on important facts that will only be mentioned once during the lecture. It is next to impossible to prevent texting 100 percent but students should try to cut back - you never know when you will run into a teacher who will ask you to leave the class because of excessive texting. Doubt that will make you ROTFL!
Jessica Seals is currently a senior at the University of Memphis majoring in political science and minoring in English. At the University of Memphis, she is the secretary of the Pre-Law Society, the philanthropy chair of the Phi Kappa Phi Student Council and a member of Professional Assertive United Sisters of Excellence (PAUSE), Golden Key Honor Society, Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society, Sigma Alpha Lambda Honor Society, and Black Scholars Unlimited. She also volunteers to tutor her fellow classmates and hopes to attend law school in the near future.