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As a scientist, I don't comprehend the concept behind "making comments in class." In all honesty, I cannot comprehend why anyone would raise their hand during a lecture unless they had something academically substantial to contribute to the collective enlightenment of the class--a question relevant to everyone, an argument exposing a flaw in the presenter's argument, or a well-researched connection to something equally well-researched.

However, as I've observed while learning to function in non-science classes, comments that fit the above criteria are the exception rather than the norm, and to help me make sense of this concept I've started to classify the types of comments I hear every day into six general categories. It's no wonder I'm confused--no one taking electrical physics raises his hand to inform the class that the principles that drive three-dimensional charged-field magnetism are "just so true, because, like, I was talking to my roommate/boyfriend/spouse last night, and we realized that people do this ALL the time. I mean, when I was on my mission, I had this investigator who..."

The Six Major Types of Comments in Liberal Arts Classes
1) Corroboration
2) Parallel example: Course-relevant/Scholarly
3) Parallel example: Individual-specific
4) Expansive example: Intelligent
5) Expansive example: Unfounded logic leap
6) "I feel..."

Corroboration comments consist of a student raising his or her hand to agree with the professor. No insight or additional information is added. Inexplicably, the student must just agree out loud. These people always make me wonder. If they feel such an urge to comment when they understand a principle, and they only comment once or twice per lecture, what does this say about how much they understand?

Parallel example: Course-relevant/Scholarly comments are rare--diamonds among dust mites. Comments in this category are exactly what they sound like--intelligent, relevant, and thought-provoking. Sadly, comments like this are almost extinct, having been brutally forced out of their natural habitat by attention-seeking opinion whores packing rounds of personal pronouns.

I find Parallel example: Individual-specific comments absolutely incomprehensible. What illogical,  egocentric force drives a person to raise his or her hand to share an irrelevant story from his or her daily life with a class of fifty others with no vested interest never fails to shock me. Extensive comments about a movie one has seen or a book one has read (unknown to the rest of the class) also fall here.

Expansive example: Intelligent comments are indicative of deep thought; these comments concisely and effectively articulate connections between ideas, great works, languages, historical figures, or contemporary society and the topic at hand.

Expansive example: Unfounded logic leap comments confuse everyone involved (including the commenter). These are the comments in which a very confused student makes connections to something he or she doesn't fully understand, and no one knows whether to laugh or to pretend like they didn't hear. For example, after an exhaustive lecture on protein complexing in homologous recombination in my molecular biology class last year, one girl raised her hand to ask, "Is this why we have gay people?"

"I feel..." comments express the emotions (and not the opinions) of the commenter. These comments match Parallel example: Individual-specific comments in sheer irrelevancy. Why fifty other students and a professor should care what YOU feel about Principle X is absolutely beyond me.