As a student here I've done about 105hrs of official class and research time over the last 3.5yrs. I was talking to someone today and she was saying that I'd got "mentioned in dispatches" because a student I'd shared a couple of classes with said she liked the fact I engaged the lecturer in discussion in class. Apparently it showed I'd been thinking and it got this student thinking about what I was talking about too.

This is the third or fourth person who said this (in a nice way I think) since I started my course. In a way I'm flattered of course, but all I was doing was getting myself prepared for class, reading what I was supposed read and thinking about what the lecturer was trying to get us to think about before class started. Call me naive, but doesn't everyone do that?

There's one of the things I don't understand about students here. They're paying for courses here and so should come engaged if they're going to get the most out of class. Yet they don't. Why? It ticks me off if I'm honest. To make matters worse, some people have suggested I ask fewer questions in class (they say it can be intimidating or be beyond their level). Maybe they're right, but it's resulted in me doing better in school than I've ever done before, so who knows, maybe I'll keep it up.