Last Monday was like any other Monday morning for University of Nebraska-Lincoln accounting professor Gene Little. His 8:30 a.m. section of Accounting II was about half full, with less than half of students present actually paying attention. Little’s students are usually ready to leave five minutes early, with the sounds of folders being stuffed into backpacks and zippers being zipped up filling the lecture hall at 9:15 a.m. However, this class period saw one student, freshman accounting major Sheldon Rivera, was ready to go right from the beginning, spending the entire lecture packing his things up.

Professor Little said in his five years of teaching, he had never seen something like this before. “At this point in my career, I’m used to students packing up near the end of class,” said Little. “But I heard someone packing up while I was taking attendance. Really? We had 50 minutes left! For the love of God. I can’t wait until the day I finally have tenure and I can finally ignore stuff like this.”

Sally Brown, a freshman actuarial science major, was in the front row of the classroom at 8:30 when Rivera sat down next to her and started pulling several notebooks and pencils out of his backpack. Just minutes later, he began putting everything away. “I could hardly focus,” said Brown. “Like, for real, how much stuff did he bring to class? All I could hear was zippers in the background. Do people not have respect for class time anymore?”

The DailyER was able to sit down with Rivera for an interview regarding this lecture. “I had a meeting at 9:30 on the other side of campus and had to be ready to book it,” said Rivera, on why he spent the whole lecture packing his things up. “Also, we were just going over the homework assignment today. I should have skipped, but I really need those attendance points. Hey, is there any way we can wrap up this interview now? I have class in 10 minutes.”