Yea, I'm just gonna go now...

Is it rude to walk out during the middle of a lecture?

You’re lying slumped over your desk and tilt your eyes towards the clock on the wall. Time seems to be going backwards, that’s how horrifyingly boring the particular lecture is. You can think of a million different things that you would rather be doing, than sitting in the lecture, listening to your lecturer drone on about something that you couldn’t care less about. We have all been in this situation, often more than once and I’m sure that nearly everyone can agree on how painful these can sometimes become.

This however, does not give you the excuse to just pack up your things and leave. I think it is incredibly rude to leave while the lecturer is still trying to teach. We all know that not every lecture is going to bring excitement and provide interesting information. There will be times where the information which is being discussed and taught will be mind numbingly boring, but do you honestly expect to be entertained by your lecturer all the time?
Honestly, it's just common courtesy and good manners to sit through the lecture, no matter how much you aren’t enjoying it. The fact that your lecturer put in the effort to prepare the lecture and teach it to you means that you should also just put in a little effort and respect by attending the lecture and actually staying for the full 45 minutes. It’s actually not a long time, considering that we can sit still throughout an entire movie which can often stretch to around two hours.

What I don’t understand is if you are going to leave the lecture, why bother coming in the first place? It just doesn’t make a lot of sense, deciding to go to a lecture and then leaving halfway through. You just end up distracting the lecturer as well as some of the people sitting close to you. If you think about it, all you manage to achieve in this process is wasting your own time. And besides, you’re the one who chose the subject, so it is in your own interest and responsibility to sit through the lectures.

Look at it this way. Imagine that you wanted to talk to your friends about something which was really important to you. You’d expect them to listen to what you have to say, wouldn’t you? So picture them walking away halfway through what you were telling them about. It wouldn’t exactly make you feel appreciated or respected, in fact it would most probably make you feel like the complete opposite.
Well, that is probably what the lecturer feels like when you leave the room during the middle of the lecture. So in a way, you should really think about the Buddhist saying, “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful” and try to follow and live by it, because ultimately it holds a lot of truth.

There are about 500 hundred students who took first year Psychology this year, and today when I arrived for the afternoon lecture, there was a grand total of 20 students present, which decreased to 18 after two students left within the first five minutes of the lecture. Besides this small number, at least most of the students who were there decided to make the effort to attend the lecture and then stay the full time.

So, in a way, it was better that the other students decided from the very beginning that they weren’t going to come to the lecture, rather than leaving halfway through and disrupting the class. It’s like Werner Brohmke, a Rhodes Psychology lecturer says, “If you don’t want to come to the lectures, why don’t you just study through UNISA instead?” He has a good point there.