It is three minutes before class ends and already you can hear the sounds of people packing up — impatient students closing their books, shoving their papers into folders, clicking their pens, shuffling their feet impatiently waiting to be dismissed, opening and closing zippers.

You can hear the friction between the chairs and the floor, or if you’re in Lecture Hall 1, the sound of desks as they drop onto the floor from the sides of the chairs. Some students even leave prematurely, standing up and blocking the view of the students sitting behind them. Others sit quietly, all packed up and ready to go, with their backpacks over their shoulders — their desks noticeably spare — waiting to be dismissed, like sprinters anticipating the start of the race.

And the professor, straining to finish his lecture, attempts to speak over the collective little noises that obscure his voice.

When the class is finally dismissed, most students funnel out of the hall within mere seconds, leaving behind the few who chose not to pack up as early as everyone else did.

This is an extremely common scenario in many of the lectures and discussions that I have attended, and such behavior has become so normal that no one — students and teachers alike — has really done anything about it. The few professors who give out quizzes or clicker questions at the end of the lecture are the exception. However, a professor should not really have to coerce students to make us stay until the end of a lecture.

Just think about how it would feel to stand in front of a class and then, while you’re in the middle of teaching, half of your students start packing up to leave. I can imagine it’s incredibly distracting and frustrating for the professors, some of who may take it personally; I know I would.

More importantly, as you rustle around and get ready to bolt, you are also disturbing your fellow classmates (i.e. the author of this article), who are trying their hardest to pay attention to the professor.

To be quite blunt, I’ve noticed that there is definite correlation between how long a class is willing to stay and how much the students respect the professor. If students are packing up 10 minutes before class ends, that’s a sign of trouble. But if no one packs up until the moment the professor dismisses the class, even if he overextends the scheduled time, then that can only be a good thing.

Unless, of course, the professor really is just using scary or coercive tactics to make students stay.

Even if I have a class afterward and the professor has overextended the class time, I rarely pack up early. Listening to the professor and paying close attention helps me reinforce all the material in my mind. So, in a way, I stay put more for myself than out of respect for the professor — although that is definitely one major reason I refuse to pack up early.

It also doesn’t take that long to walk from one class to another, even if they are far apart, and personally, I would rather be late for my next class than leave before I am dismissed.