Erica+H+OpEd+Article



“Maria, can you get the lights?” “Maria, how’d it go?” – Mr. Geib. I understand that Mr. Geib has too many students to count, but I’m pretty sure that my name is the only one he just can’t remember. It’s not like he gets it wrong all of the time, just a lot of the time. It just really grinds my gears when people can’t remember other people’s names.

It isn’t just when Mr. Geib gets my name wrong, but the countless amounts of times that I’ve witnessed people asking their friends who people are when they are passing out papers after we have been in school an entire semester. I mean, come on, you’ve been in a class with people for half a year and you still don’t know their names! I’ve been in that situation too many times to count. “Do you know who this is?” – person asking who “Erika Hurtado” is to the person that I sit next to; the person that I sit next to points to me and then I just feel awkward. I make it a point to learn everyone’s names in class by the first month of school, maybe because I’m a very observant person, but maybe it’s because I find it extremely rude to not learn someone’s name. People always make the common excuse of “Oh, I just suck at names!” and that is honestly just the worst excuse in the book. Unless people actually have a serious memory problem, I sum it up to people being ignorant. Learning a person’s name is not brain surgery! It makes people feel bad and like you don’t think the person whose name you don’t know is worth remembering.

I don’t blame Mr. Geib for not being able to remember my name because he has had a bagillion students or the people who just choose not to remember anyone’s name because they don’t care; I just think it kind of sums up the person you are.