Thank goodness it's Friday.

I give two exams today - my only two classes today. I brought the Bird's Nest shawl to work on, as I don't like to mark papers while proctoring a test, and I don't have any other "not very high attention" requiring thing to work on.

There have been several discussions going on at Ravelry - some in the "general topics" thread ("Remnants" is I guess what it's called), some in the Science Knitters thread, some in Ivory Tower Fiber Freaks about where it is and is not appropriate to knit.

(The latest thread - in ITFF - was about knitting while proctoring. The general consensus was that it was OK, and in fact, perhaps better than some other things you could do.)

Anyway, one thing that strikes me is how people tend to define what is and is not rude.

For example: I never knit in meetings (unless there are other knitters there and they plan on knitting) because I recognize that some people might perceive it as rude ("She cares so little about our meeting that she's doing something else!") or dismissive or some other bad thing. I guess I tend to see it as "rudeness is in the eye of the beholder."

There are other people on Ravelry who are adamant - and I mean ADAMANT - that it is always OK to bring knitting to meetings and knit. "Educating the muggles" was the general attitude those individuals took.

And you know? Knitting in the meeting is not the same as taking on a person for telling racist jokes. It's not the same as fighting the "women can't do math" attitude (there was a funny xkcd strip a couple months ago about that).

I prefer to choose my battles. If the people around me think it might be rude of me to knit in a meeting, it's not my place to disabuse them of that notion.

The other thing is, I guess I was raised too much with the Golden Rule. (Or maybe some other folks weren't raised enough with it, I don't know). I tend to look at it like this: if a student pulled out their day-planner in my class, and during the middle of a class discussion started to work on their next month's schedule of things to do, even if they looked up occasionally, I'd be somewhat irritated. I'd feel like they weren't participating.

There's currently a debate on in academe about "should we allow students to bring laptops in to class and work on them in class?" The people arguing against it point out that when they wander to the back of the classroom, a certain percentage of the people are surfing Facebook or are watching YouTube videos with the sound turned way down, or are shopping online, or something.

And I don't know. Part of me wants to call it an "it's YOUR funeral" situation - as in, if you bring the laptop to class, and instead of paying attention and taking notes and participating, you update your "Friends" page, it's your funeral when you fail class.

But then again - with assessment being an angry god that must be appeased regularly, it does hurt the department (and the professor) a little if you have a number of people "checking out" like that.

(And please don't give me the old "If YOU were more interesting..." argument. I've used that to beat myself up so many times I'm almost immune to it now. I seriously think I could start handing out random $20 bills to people who could answer questions about class material, and still some people wouldn't figure it was worth paying attention. And I DO try to make it interesting - bringing in issues that are in the news, using local examples, etc. You can lead a horse to water but you can't push its head under the surface and scream at it to drink.)

At any rate- back to knitting and etiquette. I prefer not to do things that make myself stand out in a crowd too much (I mean, stand out in a bad way). Because it seems that bad things can happen to people who make themselves disagreeable in some way to their fellows. (And yes, I know, "disagreeable" is a strong word, but it covers the whole range of behaviors from talking to your neighbor while in class or at a meeting to being "that guy" or "that woman" who has their own special hobby-horse issue that has to be raised and ranted on at every meeting, regardless of whether it fits in with the meeting topic or not.)

So I don't knit in public a whole lot. The other thing is - at meetings where you know most of the people (like church meetings), if I show up early, I almost feel like pulling out my knitting would send an "I don't want to talk to you all" signal. And I don't want to inadvertently hurt people's feelings.

(And one thing I have learned? There are some people in this world whose feelings are reeeeeeeaaaaalllly eeeeeeeaaaaaaaaasily hurt. I thought I was sensitive but I'm like Rock-Woman compared to some of the people I know.)

So I don't know. I guess I'm a little baffled when people say, "I don't care if it makes other people think I'm rude, it's not rude, and so I'm going to do it" and then they get upset when other people continue to react to them as if they are being rude.

But I have my knitting for while proctoring exams. As most of the other faculty read journals while they invigilate (another, and I think cooler, word for proctoring), I don't see that any of the students would be offended by my knitting.

Well, unless they were trying to cheat, that is, because I'm going to be watching them the whole time.