Pet Peeves

By Stephanie Rosso

Pet peeves, oh where do I even begin? We all have them! They’re those little things people do that drive us absolutely wild. Everybody has their own pet peeves, but after polling around campus, here’s a list of the most common pet peeves students shared.

Acting like you’re “too cool for school”- There is nothing like sitting in a class where nobody wants to participate. It’s boring and the class feels like it’s lasting forever.
Sniffling- It’s cold and flu season, but tissues are a really cool thing. If you blow your nose, chances are you’ll feel better. Plus, your classmates will greatly appreciate the 20 million sniffle noses stopping for the remainder of the class.

Abrupt stopping- Please don’t do this. When you’re walking up or down the stairs and the person in front of you completely stops moving, you are left just standing there with the “what the” look on your face. On top of that you probably almost pushed into them because you weren’t ready for that. Just like when your walking to your class and the person in front of you on the sidewalk stops. There’s no doubt that you just about walk directly into them because you didn’t see that coming. If you need to stop, please step aside. You definitely wouldn’t stop in the middle of the lane on the highway, so try not to do it on campus.

Blasting music through earbuds- If you’re in the library and the music is blaring through your earbuds so loudly that everyone can hear the words of the song your listening to, we have a problem. It probably sounds great to you, but the people around you that decided to come to the library for some quiet study time, probably want to chuck a book your way.

Chewing in class- Now this, this right here, is awful. Dreadful. Excruciating. If you’re hungry that is totally understandable. But please, for the sake of all the other humans around you, be quiet. Take your snack out of its crinkly bag before class. The sound of someone trying to “quietly” open a snack is pretty awful. Open your chips, pop-tart, hummus or whatever it is before the class starts. And please, don’t eat during a test. When the room is quiet and you are trying to remember everything you crammed into your head, the last thing you want to hear is someone’s snack being crushed into tiny pieces by their teeth. And a special note for those gum chewers out there, please close your mouth.
Sharing your personal stories in the Tim Horton’s line- When you’re standing in line for your morning coffee, the last thing you care to hear is the gossip and dirty details of the other peoples night. Save that for when you and your friends are in your dorm or anywhere else that you are not shoulder to shoulder with other people. The Tim’s line is most definitely not the place to air dirty laundry. Not yours and not your friends. Not to mention the person who’s night you are putting on blast for everyone else in line to hear, would probably be very aggravated if they heard you.

Taking someone’s “assigned” seat- okay, sure, the seat doesn’t “officially” belong to you. But everyone knows that where you sit on that first day of the semester is where you stay for the rest of the semester. If someone sits in the same seat every class for two weeks, don’t walk in before them and claim their spot for your own. It’s so rude. Would you like it if someone just came in your dorm and decided they wanted your room so they moved you out? Nope. Taking someone’s seat is just awful. You will turn every class into a completion of “who can get there first” for the coveted seat. Don’t attempt this.

Parking like you just don’t care- We have parking lines for a reason. Park inside the lines. Parking at NU is tough enough, don’t make it worse for your peers by taking up two spots. If you are afraid of getting a ding on your door from another car, park in the back of the lot. And on that note, don’t just fling your car door open into another car. One last thing, if there’s snow on the ground and you can’t see the lines, use that built-in thing called ‘judgement’ when parking. Don’t park so close to a car that the person can’t get out or park so crooked that half the row is taken up.