Then there was simply plain rudeness. That first quarter I noticed that some students would read newspapers - the baseball hat guys immersed in USA Today sports page or textbooks from other classes - while I was talking. Often, some students would pair up as if they were back in high school, and maintain their own little chatty powwows whie I was trying to teach the class. I had a pair of nineteen-year-old women in my writing class that first quarter who introduced me to this trait. When I would interrupt them and ask them to pay attention, they'd give me these looks like I was the rude one for interrupting them. But I don't mean to single out the women; just as often two guys would pair up and chat away, not really trying to lower their voices, as if their conversation was the main act and the class and I were mere sideshows.