I never have anything remotely intelligent to say, which is why I seldom open my mouth during a seminar. That was a bad way to introduce this column, but I never have anything remotely intelligent to say, remember? 

During a seminar, I’m like most of you: quiet and unresponsive. Whenever a professor asks the class a question, I just look down at my notebook and start flipping through the pages. I pretend I’m looking for an answer, but I’m really stalling and waiting for someone to answer the damn question so I don’t have to — just like you’re doing.

Sometimes a smart kid will answer the question and save us all. Then we breathe a collective sigh of relief and go back to daydreaming. We’re lulled into a false sense of security because we assume the smart kids will continue to move the conversation forward.

But the truth is smart college students are about as rare as a win from our football team, and professors know this. Professors know that having the same three people talk over and over again is a bust, no matter how rousing the discussion is. They’d rather open it up to everybody. They’d rather settle for shit, in other words. So they start calling on people such as me, who have nothing to say, and that’s where the problems start.

Like when a professor forces everyone in the class to say something. Yeah, that’s great logic: Maybe an intellectual discussion will develop if you force students to say things. It’s not like we’ll say something that borders on the retarded just to receive credit. Oh, wait, that’s exactly what we’ll do. In fact, if you force students to participate in group discussions, I guarantee the semi-retarded non-answer is the only type of answer you’ll get.

How about when a professor makes us question one another? When I was in high school, I used to get around this problem by flipping to a random page in whatever book we were covering, locating a sentence, writing it down and putting “What is the deeper meaning of [insert here]?” around it. I’ve yet to try it here, though I’m sure it would work fine.

But I digress. The whole idea of seminars and group discussions is stupid because most college kids have nothing intelligent to say. How do I know this? Because I’m a college student myself, and I’ve never said anything in my life without later realizing it was the dumbest thing ever. That last sentence was dumb. This entire column is dumb.

And professors who think forcing everyone to participate will lead to a successful seminar are the dumbest of all. They just don’t get it. Either let the smarter kids take the reins and lead a thought-provoking seminar, or force everyone to participate and watch the quality of discussion suffer as a consequence. But don’t expect intellectual conversation to spring forth if everyone in the class is participating — especially me.

Any questions?

Mike Sanders is a junior history major. He can be reached at sanders at umdbk dot com.