There is a fantastic class discussion going on. Students are speaking up, ideas are flowing, people are engaged, then all of a sudden it comes to a screeching halt. The Storyteller has raised his hand and decided to impart his valuable life experiences on the class. There is nothing worse in class than the Storyteller. This person has the idea that the class will benefit from a story about a personal experience they’ve had. Unfortunately, they are never right.

Most of the time the story begins with, “this one time in high school, I .” and develops into a lovely fable about the persons experience with their second girlfriend and how much they loved them and how they went on this trip together and how fun it was.

After seven or eight minutes, right around the time a third of the class has weighed the pros and cons of taking a fall from a third story window of Duke hall, the Storyteller realizes that he has to bring his story back around and relate it to the now-deceased class discussion.

“So me and Sarah realized that we had the keys the whole time! Oh, and uh, we talked about the cultural significance of America’s influence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

The beautiful discussion that was taking place at the beginning of class, that magic event that makes a small college worthwhile, is now dead like the Storyteller’s aunt that was brought up four times last week.

The varied personal experiences that people bring with them to college make a school special. People with different backgrounds, ideals and beliefs are going to bring different perspectives to the classroom and make a seminar interesting and help make education work. This is fantastic. This is not what the Storyteller does.

The Storyteller is likely insecure and lacks a firm grasp of the class material. Rather than accepting the fact that they have no place in the discussion because they are entirely unprepared, the Storyteller finds an obscure connection between a story from their pre-college life and the classroom discussion.

Storytellers are detrimental to seminars everywhere. If you are a student, be on guard and stop a storyteller before they can kick into full swing. Jump into the story if you can find a break in the rambling and bring the discussion back from the critical condition the Storyteller has put it in.

If you are a professor, do the rest of the class a favor and ask the Storyteller how their story is relevant before they’ve spent eight minutes telling it. This will let them know that you’re onto their game and you don’t want it ruining your class.

If you are a storyteller yourself, please stop telling your stories. Believe it or not, there is a reason the 18 other people in your class are not telling stories about that one time they did that one thing. It’s not that they don’t have their own experiences in life that they could share with the class. It’s that they realize the rest of the class has no connection to their stories and their stories have no connection with the class.

Nobody cares about what you were like in high school, who you dated, or where you’ve traveled. Do your homework, find something interesting in the reading, bring it up in class, and try to be a worthwhile student like everybody else.