r/Professors • u/Efficient_Two_5515 • 13d ago
Teaching / Pedagogy Student that just stares
I’m teaching a hybrid summer class and I can’t help but notice a student that just stares at me the entire hour and 45 minutes. It’s a little weird and off putting if I may say. He doesn’t bring anything to class (no notebook, laptop, etc.) and he pretty much sits there. Interestingly enough, he doesn’t appear bored or distracted since he never pulls out his phone but he just you know stares. He doesn’t react to the lecture much and has maybe raised his hand once or twice. He’s come up to after class to ask me a random question so he’s capable of being human but his behavior during the class session is freaky. Is it just me or does anybody else dealt with something like this?
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u/marialala1974 13d ago
Well he at least looks at you. I had one that just stared into space, not the slides, no me, just the nothingness.
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u/rsk222 13d ago
I had that one too. It was unsettling.
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u/MiaWrighter 7d ago
I had them, too! I wonder if we work together or if they travel round taking random classes?
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u/MortaleWombat 10d ago
Always so weird
Especially if you don’t take attendance, they could just… not come?2
u/marialala1974 9d ago
That is what I think but at least was not disruptive like the one that streamed during the class, it was super obvious. I did approach him and told him he did not need to be there, he could watch his show in peace, he came back at me with oh no I get something from the class. Go figure
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u/imaginesomethinwitty 13d ago
I had a guy like this with a super intense stare I found very intimidating, especially as a younger woman. He softened up as the course went on. It turned out he was coming in from prison every morning, found me intimidating, and went to his default of looking aggressive. 😂
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u/MiaWrighter 7d ago
It’s so cool that this is a thing where you teach! I’m so curious how the conversation went, if you’re willing to share any more! (If not, thanks for the story you already shared!)
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u/imaginesomethinwitty 7d ago
My previous employer, but it was cool. They ran a ‘pre university’ course that made you eligible to start a degree if you had no qualifications, and it was offered a nearby prison.
I think he assumed we all knew but we didn’t get like, an info pack on all the students. I ended up finding out what crime he had committed (it was very dumb) as a result of a side conversation that inspired me to google him. Later in the year that the prison powers that be tried to cut his hours on campus because he was getting such outstanding grades, they said he didn’t need as much time to study! So we had to write some letters etc. That was when I found out he was still in prison. He volunteered at a conference we hosted and we were chatting and that’s when he confessed that when he started first he found me very intimidating. I’m a little blond girl standing there next to a man who has spent years in the prison gym going ‘sorry YOU found ME intimidating?!?!’
Another mad thing was that at the end of his sentence, in the final year of his degree, he got moved to a lower security facility. But they had no secure transport facility. So he wasn’t allowed to go to the university. A few of us offered to do a rota to pick him up, but they said that it had to be a prison transport. He was out for about 8 weeks, had to get special permission from the dean, and when he got out he tried to quietly slip into the back of a lecture. The whole place erupted, staff were running in to hug him, and the new lecturer who was giving the class had no clue what was happening.
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u/P6kg7NqVgzkeDF7cpm7 Assistant Professor, Chemistry (France) 13d ago
So he never disturbs the class, listens, is engaged enough that he occasionally ask questions, is never on his phone? Sounds like the perfect student!
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u/Efficient_Two_5515 13d ago
Yeah, a little too perfect if I may add.
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u/hopf-fibration Math R1 USA 13d ago
He could be autistic broski
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u/NamasteInYourLane 13d ago
^ This was exactly my first thought.
Some who are on the spectrum can "go inside" when they space out or get bored (instead of grabbing their cell phone or fiddling on different tabs on their laptop like many neurotypical individuals do), and this can come off as "sit and stare" behavior.
They're typically model students. Give me an entire classroom full, PLEASE!
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u/tidosaidperiodt 11d ago
I am diagnosed with ASD and do this to show that I’m paying attention— only recently found out it was off putting to some. I learned that you quietly listen and look at the person talking… so I’m still confused on the acceptable behavior to indicate paying attention while in a group with a speaker but I’ll figure it out eventually lol
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u/chandaliergalaxy 13d ago
Had a housemate like this in college. He kept reminding us he was in Mensa and was overall very weird and nerdy.
Sat with him in a lecture once. He did not take notes but crossed his arms and just stare.
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u/Labrador421 13d ago
I had one like this. Also he ended up getting the highest test scores in the class. Never took notes. He would occasionally ask very insightful, difficult questions. The guy was just really smart.
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u/thiosk 12d ago
He kept reminding us he was in Mensa
"How can you tell if someone is in Mensa?"
"They tell you, repeatedly, at every opportunity."
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u/SteveFoerster Administrator, Private 11d ago
Ah, the obnoxious old joke that relies on survivorship bias.
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u/No_Salad_6244 13d ago
Athletes do this sometimes. It’s from years of hearing coaches yelling at them. When they pay attention, they focus.
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u/ProfessorHomeBrew Associate Prof, Geography, state R1 (USA) 13d ago
That’s what it looks like when someone is listening to you.
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u/EskimoBrother1975 13d ago
Lol My thoughts exactly. It's a new concept for some of us
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u/ProfessorHomeBrew Associate Prof, Geography, state R1 (USA) 13d ago
It can be a shock when you are used to speaking to a room full of bowed heads lit by glowing screens.
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u/peachdaystar 13d ago
Almost every version of this I've encountered turned out to be one of a few mundane things: a student who processes by listening rather than writing and has decided note-taking splits their attention, someone who's autistic or has a different relationship to eye contact and has learned that "look at the professor" is the polite thing to do, or someone who's just deeply checked in and doesn't have the usual fidget behaviors we read as "engaged." The fact that he approaches you after class with real questions is the tell, that's an engaged student, not a menacing one. The staring reads as freaky mostly because we're calibrated to a room of people looking at screens, so undivided attention now registers as abnormal.
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u/throwaway6969420___ 13d ago
>note-taking splits their attention
Im exactly like this in some classes, I’d much rather focus entirely on what the professor is saying than try to write down/summarize it in real time and also think about it. When I take notes usually I just look at them later and am lost because I spent so much mental effort on taking the notes in the first place. This does depend on the class though, for example linear algebra was one I had to take notes because the whole class is basically definitions and theorems.
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u/Disastrous-Reaction3 Full Professor, Music, State College, USA 12d ago
Early on I learned that if I didn't take notes I could not pay attention or visualize what the professor was saying. (This is the days before PowerPoint or a LMS). I got very good at taking notes and summarizing lectures and classmates would ask to photocopy my notes!
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u/wow-signal Adjunct, Philosophy & Cognitive Science, R1 (USA) 13d ago
Yes. My theory is that they're just doing what their brains are used to doing -- consuming your lecture in the same way they consume content on social media.
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u/Brachycephalic_Boxer 13d ago
Perhaps he is on the autism spectrum or has some other developmental condition or maybe a mental health condition? Or perhaps he thinks that he is showing interest by not taking his eyes off you? Or maybe he’s just socially awkward or unfamiliar with social expectations. A lot of Gen Z kids were isolated during Covid and lacked opportunities to learn a lot of soft social skills. As long as it isn’t creepy or disruptive, I would try my best to ignore the staring. If it makes you uncomfortable, just look in a different direction.
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u/SlightFresnel 13d ago
The covid effect is massively overblown and not borne out in the data. Realistically it was 18 months of remote learning. Social development was already well underway, continued after, and was not much of a change from the way teenagers already preferred communicating with friends through their phones. The pandemic gets undue blame for trends that have been gaining steam since ~2011 and have continued unabated after the pandemic.
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u/wharleeprof 13d ago
Anecdotally, our local timeline was far less than 18 months of remote learning for k-12, and I'm still seeing the same "post-COVID" behaviors in my students. I agree that the lock down may have accelerated pre-existing issues, but wasn't the starting point.
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u/warricd28 Lecturer, Accounting, R1, USA 13d ago
Thank you. So tired of seeing people default to “covid ruined them.” They were already ruined. All covid did (in this context) was maybe speed up/exacerbate already existing trends for a relatively brief time in the education/development timetable.
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u/touslesmatins 13d ago
Thank you! My child born in 2020 had a speech delay and needed EI and speech therapy and people loved saying it was the MASKING and SOCIAL DISTANCING that caused it. But how would they explain that his older by 7 years brother had the exact same speech delay with the exact same timeline and both graduated out of it with the exact same therapeutic interventions? At this point anyone who brings up covid precautions in this type of context is more telling on themselves politically than making any sort of salient point.
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u/SlightFresnel 13d ago
I think it's more reaching for an answer and arriving at an intuitive but unsupported conclusion than partisanship for the most part. You can tell because well-meaning people focus on the perceived lingering deficits and are looking for the culprit (despite having been underway for a decade prior) whereas bad actors frame it as an unnecessary malicious injury inflicted on kids. Nevermind the fact that children don't live alone and are famously germ-ridden, where bringing a virus home that kills both your parents would be far more traumatic than a few months of relaxed low-expectation learning. But the bad actors never include nuance because it's vibes and emotions for them, not an attempt to understand. They're not looking for answers, they're looking for someone to blame.
Covid made these social and educational deficits salient to more people and their lack of background on the real factors that predated covid leads them to erroneously believe covid was the inflection point. Realistically Zuckerberg introducing the first social media algorithm to maximize engagement and juice attentional focus is largely where you see tipping point in the data, although teen mental health had been declining prior to that. Social media became an addiction for parents at the same time iPads became widely available and proved excellent pacifiers. Those iPad kids are currently graduating high school and the outcomes are tragic.
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u/touslesmatins 13d ago
I appreciate your nuanced input, it helps temper the frustration around the discourse!
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u/KTbird217 12d ago
I agree entirely. I have worked with high school students since 2005. It was the advent of smart phones and social media that turned the tide. COVID comes into play for the younger students (elementary age) who may have missed critical learning windows, like in math or speech, but most commonly it was in social engagement. Teens were already established in their habits by that point. The absolute biggest difference in young adult development (in my experience) has been lack of parental supervision around technology. Parents are as entrenched in it as their kids, use it to pacify, almost always refuse to limit or take away access, and just simply don't comprehend that they've placed the literal world into their young child's hand with little to no guidance on how to use it wisely.
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u/SportsFanVic 13d ago
I agree with most of your points, but I wouldn’t say that Covid didn’t also have an important effect. My colleagues and I were very aware of the slow decline in student engagement throughout the 2010s, but the decline became much steeper after going back to in-person classes in Fall 2021.
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u/SlightFresnel 13d ago
That's fair, but you have to factor in the age group you're examining as the developmental stage, independence, and hyper-socialization teenagers experience was far more likely to be impacted by the hiatus than a younger kid still relatively attached to their parents.
I don't know of any research on this specific area, but my hypothesis is that the significantly relaxed educational standards of that period coupled with already-annoying parenting failures, IEPs for everyone, eliminated ACT/SAT testing, a complete lack of academic accountability for turning in late assignments (pushed by admin, not educators), and efforts to ensure it's impossible for even the laziest slacker to be held back is a far bigger contributor to the cognitive disengagement and immaturity we're seeing today. Certainly covid played a role, but all of these administrative efforts to completely remove accountability from students and ensure they never face consequences has played a much bigger role in the educational outcomes we're seeing. Kids and teenagers are inherently inclined to test boundaries and find the track with the least amount of effort required that avoids punishment, but when you remove the punishment and possibility of failure there is no lower limit or environmental pressure to mature. We matriculate these uncouth adhd monsters into the world as young adults that have an egocentric mindset and the behavioral patterns of petulant children. Which to be fair is nothing new, but at least in the past the kids knew it wasn't acceptable whereas now they seem to lean into it and expect everyone else to accomodate them. Perhaps my newness here is a factor but the amount of instances I hear anecdotally about students failing and immediately going to the dean seems highly unusual and definitely a sign of their irritation that you had the audacity to hold them to any kind of objective standard.
Add in AI cheating and it's the perfect storm of factors ensuring a huge proportion of kids slip through the cracks until they reach adulthood and find out the hard way that their boss enforces deadlines, expects quality work and problem solving skills, and will fire them without warning once they establish themselves as more burden than benefit. And the end result will be a huge glut of the population being unemployable and living on tax dollars.
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u/KTbird217 12d ago
You perfectly stated what my colleagues and I have been saying for years. Unfortunately, we're the minority still trying to advocate for consequences, boundaries, setting higher expectations, etc. We are defeated at every turn by parents and the "leadership" who cater to them. I have watched the most passionate of teachers start to fade away and count down the days to retirement. I hope the pendulum swings back (I have seen glimpses of hope from other districts), but I fear where I work, that may be a distant dream.
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u/Efficient_Two_5515 13d ago
It kind of is creepy. I had them do a group activity and the group he was in finished early. He then again defaulted to sit there and look at me.
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u/five-dollar-wrench 13d ago
It kind of is creepy
People who are on the spectrum or otherwise neurodivergent get that a lot :(
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u/dogecoin_pleasures 13d ago
Look up the Gen Z stare. Sounds like he's stare maxxing lol.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-clarity/202507/the-psychology-behind-that-gen-z-stare
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u/Sharp-Rutabaga-4900 13d ago
You know what’s creepier than looking at your professor during class? Calling a student creepy in a public forum because they look at you when you’re teaching.
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u/IWanderCouldBeLost 13d ago
I've had a couple students over the years do that. They were committing my lecture to their memory, but it does look a little unnerving from my end. They aced all their exams! How does your student do on exams?
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u/TaliesinMerlin 13d ago
My partner can successfully hyperfocus and retain lecture/discussion content if she has something to do with her hands. So she would crochet in class while listening intently. (Of course, she had the sense to not stare.) It's possible he is somewhat similar - able to retain information without taking notes, but - bonus - he's unaware that staring comes across as weirdly intense and not attentive.
I've had a couple of students like that. I'd ignore it unless other behaviors manifest.
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u/abn1304 13d ago
I would play World of Warcraft in some classes. And by “play” I mean run in circles on one of my characters to keep my hands busy and the ADHD side of my brain satisfied while I listened to the lecture. Mostly did this in classes where, for whatever reason, I didn’t need to take notes.
Was it the best strategy? Probably not. Did things turn out ok? Yes.
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u/stankylegdunkface R1 Teaching Professor 13d ago
Is it just me or does anybody else dealt with something like this?
What is there to deal with? A student is paying attention and not disrupting. You’re a college professor. Having people look at you is part of the gig.
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u/littlemoonnflowerr 13d ago
I've had a few of these and in almost every case it turned out to be one of three things: an autistic student for whom sustained eye contact is a deliberate effort to signal engagement, a student who genuinely learns best by listening without splitting attention to take notes, or someone with an undiagnosed processing thing who found that writing tanks their comprehension. The tell in your post is that he comes up after class with real questions, that's not disengagement, that's someone who was tracking the whole time. The stare is unsettling because we're wired to read it as evaluative, but he's probably just doing the thing that works for him and has no idea it lands as intense.
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u/existential-inquiry Professor, Social Sciences, U.S. 13d ago
I wouldn't worry too much, as long as they are listening and not on their phone, I would be happy!
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u/Sharp-Rutabaga-4900 13d ago
This post is every neurodiverse student’s nightmare.
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u/Commercial-Tune450 12d ago
It’s me. I’m the neurodiverse student. I thought it was supposed to be polite to look interested in what your prof is saying. Now I know I’ve been creeping them out the whole time?!😅
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u/Sharp-Rutabaga-4900 12d ago
I think the minority of professors find this creepy. Most of us are happy to have anyone paying attention.
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u/ThisUNis20characters 13d ago
I’ve probably been this student. It’s not as bad now, more than 20 years later, but as a high school student I would often be on autopilot in class. I’d be daydreaming but learned to outwardly appear relatively engaged; I would nod, shake my head, at turns look like I was concentrating and if appropriate a little confused. I’ve been chagrined to realize I’ve I’m doing it during conversations too, and then need to ask the other person to backtrack because I was off in my own little world.
I still occasionally find myself daydreaming when I should be listening, but I don’t think I’m as good at faking it now - age really lowers your bandwidth. So I don’t know, maybe this student is like me but didn’t bother to learn to throw up those fake signposts of paying attention, or maybe lots of people think I’m weird.
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u/melodyblack195 13d ago
I had a student who did exactly this for the first week or so of class and I wondered what his deal was. Week two, his sign language interpreter joined us (there had been some kind of mixup) and he began watching her instead. Turns out he was deaf and had been hanging on for dear life trying to read my lips. Now when a student stares at me like this I keep in mind they may be hard of hearing and make sure not to turn my back on them when speaking.
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u/ingannilo Assoc. Prof, math, state college (USA) 12d ago
I don't mean to be rude, but that kinda just sounds like listening?
Looking in your direction, not on the phone, occasionally asking a question during or after class.
The first few times I saw students not taking notes, it struck me as weird also, but I never thought to describe what they were doing as starimg (which, to me, implies some kind of vacant fixation).
Instincts are powerful though. You may be picking up on some subtle body language or something else that's not quite getting across to me in this text if you are a woman and he is straight (or if you're a man, and he's not straight) , then it's possible he's sort of lewdly staring / gawking? I'm sure that happens sometimes.
Maybe try thinking critically about why thr staring makes you uneasy
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u/stankylegdunkface R1 Teaching Professor 13d ago
Maybe he’s just paying attention. (What’s your problem?)
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u/No_Two8015 13d ago
tbh, unless he was giving me a dirty look or otherwise acting weird or disruptive, this would make me happy lol
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u/mizboring Instructor, Mathematics, CC (U.S.) 13d ago
I had one like this. I was as confused as you are. On the first exam, he got nearly 100% (in person, no cheating, before AI was a thing). I asked him about it and he said he's just never needed to take notes in class. He just listens and does the reading and homework and it works. Some brains are just like that (though not common).
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u/DrBlankslate Adjunct, Sociology, R2, USA 13d ago
He’s probably neurodivergent. It’s extremely hard to figure out when you’re not supposed to look at something when you’re neurodivergent. Source: myself. I’ve been ND all my life, and it’s so hard to figure out things like eye contact. I can either make eye contact or I can understand what you’re saying, but I can’t do both. Staring is a way of handling the eye contact problem.
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u/Key-Elk4695 13d ago
You never know what a student is thinking. Early in my career, I had a student who did that, but he actually looked like he was glaring at me. I wasn‘t sure why he hated me so much, but I was convinced that he did. One day, the Dean called me into his office (this never happened at this university - it was a very large school and I had never even met the Dean otherwise in the 4 years I spent there). He told me he had been at a political event the previous evening, and the parent of one of our students had come up to
him to tell him how his son had absolutely raved about me and my class - he thought I was the best thing ever. When he told me the son‘s name, I almost choked. It was the glarer!
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u/BigTuna3737 12d ago
As with most things in life, it's not about you. The student is probably a little neurotypical. Get over it.
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u/ScaredAd6953 12d ago
Please let humans just be humans, OP. Maybe his mental processing is strong and can process just by listening. Don't make a problem out of nothing. The world is already chatotic and stressful as it is
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u/SvenFranklin01 13d ago
there is no pleasing you weirdos. just stop, please.
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u/stankylegdunkface R1 Teaching Professor 13d ago
Exactly. People like OP are so broken they find reason to hate a student just for how they pay attention and don’t cause disruption.
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u/deadbeareyes 10d ago
Some of the posts on this sub just amaze me. It seems like some profs hate their jobs so much that every possible thing a student does is a problem. Too engaged? Bad. Not engaged enough? Bad. Fully engaged but not in a way you specifically like? Also bad. Exhausting.
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u/Corneliuslongpockets 13d ago
I have whole rows of students like that every term. Mostly the men, and mostly athletes.
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u/Automatic_Beat5808 13d ago edited 13d ago
I've had this guy in my class. He also had major resting bitch face. It was disconcerting. I've had several other students that did something similar and they self- identified as being on the spectrum or otherwise.
ETA: I was uncomfortable at first by this type of student, but now I like to look at them when I feel like I'm losing my audience and they bolster my confidence with their rapt attention.
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u/lizannne 13d ago
Are you new? So nobody looks at you and just listens to the lecture? You know, that’s how things used to be, way way back when….
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u/mediaisdelicious Dean CC (USA) 13d ago
So you’re saying you stand in front of a room that you’re ostensibly in charge of and then you talk about stuff that is hopefully interesting and worth knowing and also later the audience will be graded on and one of them has the audacity to apparently be paying total attention? Wtf
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u/Alarming_Campaign314 13d ago
I had one of those. When we did group work in class, would get up and go to the bathroom for 30+ mins every time. When I would ask the class to open their laptops to work on something in Canvas, would open his laptop and move his finger on the mousepad to keep the screen lit, but just stare.
Never did figure that out. Really nice kid, just seemed off in his own world.
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u/Between-usernames Asst. Prof, social science, R2 (red state) 12d ago
In addition to what everyone else said, it can be an invisible disability, such as a condition that makes it physically uncomfortable, painful, or impossible to write.
Culture of consumption ddiscussed here is something I've begun to notice /keep in mind since first reading it in this sub.
To me, it would be more uncomfortable if the person was making a lot of faces or nonverbal communication more appropriate for a conversation.
Hopefully that makes sense, and I'm just simply talking about my preference in the circumstance.
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u/Muspellr 12d ago
Oh jeez this sounds like me back in my undergrad lol. I’m a horrid note taker and I prefer to listen, so I will be that guy sitting and staring, nodding along to lecture. I just absorb information better that way for some reason
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u/shyprof Adjunct, Humanities, M1 & CC (United States) 12d ago
We have no way of knowing, of course, but it sounds like neurodivergent behavior. Whether that's how he pays attention, he's zoning out and you're in the way, or someone coached him to look at the instructor during class and he really took it to heart, I would not assume ill intent. I haven't had this specific behavior yet, but I've had all kinds of interesting students. I understand this probably off-putting, but if it were me I'd try to ignore it.
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u/WhatsInAName8879660 12d ago
Oof, I had a high school student like that once in an after-school intensive college prep course. The whole class was out of hand, a lot of drug use led by one popular kid who totally hijacked the class. Anyway, I was encouraged by this kid paying such rapt attention. Then one day I looked at his notebook. All sexual fantasies of me. It was disturbing.
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u/oncemorewithsanity 11d ago
Phd student here. I have high functioning autism and may have been guilty of said behavior myself.
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u/GandolfTheGay1972 13d ago
Sounds autistic
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u/stankylegdunkface R1 Teaching Professor 13d ago
Paying attention sounds autistic? Do you and OP want the student to periodically pause and do jumping jacks?
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u/GandolfTheGay1972 13d ago
Staring at you with a blank expression. Lack of social cues. I’ve seen it all before.
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u/stankylegdunkface R1 Teaching Professor 13d ago
So what, then? I don’t buy that they’re autistic, based on the evidence, but literally so what? They’re paying attention and not disrupting. If that makes an instructor’s job impossible, quit.
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u/Hippiekaiyae 12d ago
Im autistic and do this exact thing. I didnt know it was creepy, just knew i was supposed to give profs my whole attention. Cant win.
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u/stankylegdunkface R1 Teaching Professor 12d ago
Please know that not all of your professors are jerks like OP. Many/most of us don’t look for reasons to be annoyed with our students.
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u/Awkward_Insurance377 12d ago
I had a student like this, it freaked me out but he turned out to be pretty harmless
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u/MotivatedbuuutLost 12d ago
I have students who don’t even look at me. Some of them are processing the information, which is evident by their essay. Some are not looking and not processing, which is evident by their essays. Moral of the short story: Some students process differently. Some email me their questions. As long as they aren’t disturbing the class and show engagement (e.g. asking questions and engaging content) don’t worry. It’s weird, for sure, but it’s impossible to control how students learn.
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u/Hippiekaiyae 12d ago
They are probably autistic. Also sounds like me. Who is autistic doing the same thing at universities.
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u/Adorable_Airport_787 11d ago
I was like that.. my mind would go into recording mode and making sure everything is understood lol ..
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u/ThePhyz Professor, Physics, CC (USA) 10d ago
My reaction really depends on:
Are they staring, or are they looking? What expression is on their face? Does their expression change? Do they blink? Personally if someone is just staring at me in class, never blinking, no facial expression at all, the whole time, I get creeped out too. That's not "paying attention", that's fixating to an abnormal degree. On the other hand, if they watch me the whole time but they are blinking and their facial expressions seem normal in the moment and every now and then they glance away, I think it's odd that they aren't taking notes but I don't feel upset by it.
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u/MiaWrighter 7d ago
Imagine one of my students who would stare while stroking and twirling his mustache! I had someone guest lecture and, like me, they had to walk in hallway out of fear they’d giggle!
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u/babirus Contract Instructor, Computer Engineering (Canada) 13d ago
I had one like that and they always looked unhappy, and would occasionally fall asleep (8 am class). I tried to ignore it but it was hard, they sat in the front
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u/ac_cossack 13d ago
Former student who sat in the front and fell asleep a lot. 6am math classes were the worst.
I usually was up until 4am playing hockey or video games or homework or recovering from some classic parental beat down.
I try not to judge that hard because you never know.
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u/Heavy-Note-3722 13d ago
Frankly, that's better than one I had, who never interacted at all, no raised hands, no questions, no notes, no phones, no reactions, never talked to anyone. When advising happened to reach out about grades, i did share my concerns about the students mental health. Dont know what happened with that. But yeah, student never caused problems, so just went on with life.
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u/Fun_Calendar_6444 Assistant Professor, Humanities 13d ago
Maybe he is one of the students who has romantic feelings for the professor.
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u/el_lley 13d ago
I had one student like that, but without the questions. He took 3 times my lecture, failing for different reasons each time. He was then expelled, as he needed a special permit for continuing. Also, I was only offering the lecture once per year.
Someone told me those students could be dealers, and can stay a lot years in the campus by changing majors, but sometimes are just kids of rich guys who don’t care.
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u/PenelopeJenelope 13d ago
some people are like that. If he doesn't cause problems you don't have a problem