Ten seconds of silence.

"Let me rephrase that. Do you think she means this is a good idea, or not?"

The girl behind me darts her eyes around spastically. The nervous kid right in front pretends to pore over the text.,”

"So, what do you think the author is saying here?"

Ten seconds of silence.

"Let me rephrase that. Do you think she means this is a good idea, or not?"

The girl behind me darts her eyes around spastically. The nervous kid right in front pretends to pore over the text. Slacker Sam in the back feigns a coughing fit just to mask the awkward noiselessness. My friend doodles next to me and writes dirty limericks in the margins of her notebook.

Fifteen seconds pass. I stare around the classroom, watching my fellow students engage in their carefully practiced charades, hoping that one of them will crack first in the unbearable hush.

No one flinches. My professor looks like he wants to cry.

I raise my hand.

I don't know how many times a scene like this has played out over my college career, but I do know that I wish I had a dollar for every instance.

Class participation has accounted for anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of my final grade in various courses throughout my time at Marquette. Everyone has had classes like this; even math and science majors are required to take participation-heavy intro classes in English, philosophy and theology.

Over the past three and a half years, I have amassed a few ideas about why people don't participate. Possibly, you're so shy. Maybe you are asleep. Most likely, you didn't do the reading.

But whatever reasons you have for not participating, I have better ones that will hopefully entice you to please, please raise your hand:

1. Do it because no one likes awkward silence. You can't convince me that you do.

2. Do it to save that poor guy who always saves everybody else. Here's a newsflash: that poor guy actually doesn't love raising his hand all the time and futzing with some improvisational theory. He just talks because no one else will. Please help him.

3. Do it for your professor's sanity. Most people I know really like their profs. And even if you hate yours, I doubt you want to see her sob. That woman standing at the front of the classroom is trying to teach you something, and you should give her the courtesy of at least pretending you care.

4. Do it because it might spark a discussion that interests you. Theoretically, we're all here because we want to get something out of an education. If you're bored by a 20-minute lecture on the guest-host relationship in "The Odyssey," offer up something different.

5. Do it because, I don't know, it's required. If you don't care about anything else – the awkwardness, your classmates, your professor – you might at least care about your grade. I hope.

You may notice that when I listed postulations about why people don't participate, I left out the possibility that people don't participate because they simply don't care. I really hope this isn't the case.

We all have classes that we love. Mine happened to be editorial writing, which coincidentally happens to be part of how I got this job. The best days in that class were the days when everyone really dug into one another's writing and debated topics from immigration reform to the SAT to getting high off of cough syrup.

We also all have classes that we hate; mine happened to be introductory anthropology. I couldn't stand – or understand, for that matter – most of what my crazy professor was saying. I actively loathed sitting in that lecture hall every Monday and Wednesday.

But hating a class is still better than being completely apathetic toward it. If you actively hate a course, you still care. You disagree. You participate.

And sometimes, when you're really lucky, you learn.

“