Dear Classmates, stop being stupid.

Confession: If I'm any schoolastic archetype, I'm the know-it-all. I don't try to come across as condescending most of the time, even though I'm aware I do. I genuinely thirst for knowledge, and part of growing intellectually is to ask questions and debate meaning.

I get a lot of flak from people for doing so. I realize I tend to take over conversations in a classroom setting and that can be annoying to people. But here's why I do it:

No one else tries.

If someone brought up a strong argument for how I was wrong, I'd sit back and ponder it. I do this on the rare occasions it comes up. But it never happens. People are so complacent to sit back and just let the class pass them by. I hate it. I hate it to my very core.

Today in my media law class, we were given take home essay questions. We then had a "study session" in which people asked the teacher questions pertaining to the essay questions, in order to try and clarify things. Half the people basically asked for the answers to the questions (at least one person had the courtesy and humor to literally ask so!) and everyone else asked just stupid questions.

The saying "There are no stupid questions" is bogus. There are stupid questions. If you are seeking clarification on something in which the person answering it can simply repeat the SAME THING OVER AND OVER, they are stupid questions. I was trying my best not to rip into people during class, and apparently my seething anger at the general stupidity of my classmates boiled enough to the surface someone else caught on and asked the teacher to let me out of the class early. Thank god. I about had it in there.

Do people not get it? I am not saying I try that hard at all when it comes to classes, but at the very least I don't attempt to make things more complicated than they really are. The task is to write an essay about X; why would I then go and find a Y and Z totally unrelated to it in order to confuse myself beyond task X?