Raise Your Hand If You're Sure...

In graduate school, there are many people, processes, and paperwork that are irritating and annoying. But few things raise my ire as much as the grad school hand raiser. The hand raiser is ALWAYS a woman. While everyone else seems to have learned that we're all adults, the hand raiser seems to need the validation of someone calling on her in order to deign to grace us with her thoughts. The hand raiser raises her hand as if she's holding her place in line to speak.

"What is so annoying?" you ask. "Is the hand raiser not simply being polite?"

No, the hand raiser is being a passive aggressive manipulator who wields power in the worst of ways. The hand raiser demands to be acknowledged by others, as if everyone else in the room isn't also holding in a thought that could be shared. The hand raiser is declaring to the whole class, "Instead of listening to whomever is speaking, I'm sitting here holding my thought and pondering it instead."

The hand raiser is waiting for everyone to pause and invite her to speak. Worse than the hand raiser, is the professor who calls on her. "Oh wait, Steve. Jenny has her hand raised." Nevermind that Steve is the introvert who speaks in class exactly twice a year, Jenny has her hand raised.

Being in psychology, I often wonder if the hand raiser raises her hand to speak at family functions. If in therapy sessions, she raises her hand while her clients pour out their pain, because she's waiting to be recognized. Hand raisers are at the same time arrogant and insecure. It's a passive power move hidden behind a demeanor of propriety that is actually an insidious form of obsequiousness. (Google it!)

I once was in an Advanced Psychodynamic Therapy class where we confronted the hand raiser. She didn't stop. When she raised her hand on the last day of class, during our termination session, I pointed it out. She didn't like that, and we all just talked over her until she gave in and said whatever the hell she had to say. I find that the greatest victory of my graduate career. Forget about the clients who have made great strides under my care, or my own personal journey of growth. An entire year later, I find so much more satisfaction in that moment where the hand raiser was conquered.

Well, except the hand raiser is in class with me once again, raising that damn hand. The hand raiser isn't so bad, but in class I just want to slowly break each of her fingers. But, if I did that people would probably feel more sorry for her deformed claw of a hand and professors would call on her more. Then it would be, "I'm sorry Steve, but Jenny has her misshapen handicapped claw raised." Grrr.

So, to the hand raisers of the world. Stop. It. We aren't five and neither are you. And if you start waving that thing in the air, I'm going to break it off.