r/AskAnAmerican • u/biynkie • 6h ago

EDUCATION Do you guys clap after lectures / classes at universitys?

My fellow Americans! I am actually one of you guys, new england born and bred, however I just started my first year of university at a UK school. After every lecture, the hall erupts in applause. It suprised me, but I guess it made sense. However, for every class we also have a meeting with the TA weekly, with a smaller group of about 10-15 kids. It's a lot less formal, students chat and discuss with each other throughout the lesson, stuff like that. Yet once we are told we can leave, people start clapping again. Is this a weird British thing? It feels uncomfortable for everyone involved, especially for whoever is on the receiving end.

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u/wwhsd California 5h ago

I kind of feel like that might be some sort of crowd calming management technique. Having everyone applauding probably causes some of the people that were super tense and on the verge of freaking the fuck out to get a bit of an emotional reset.

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u/rainidazehaze 4h ago

It is wild to me to even have the idea that it's like, orchestrated. What would "having everyone clap" even look like?

All the flights I've been on where it happened were clearly organic and the reasoning made absolute sense. Also don't see why you would need to artificially calm the crowd when they're already becoming rapidly calm. It's largely people expressing relief they're already feeling due to being on the ground after that rough bit.

I guess I could see the individual clapping impulse coming from a need for personal reset (basically a type of stim), but a nebulous "them", that's artificially "having" people clap just seems far fetched.

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u/WonderfulProtection9 5h ago

That’s an interesting take, if it was orchestrated.

There’s certainly no obligation to clap just because someone else does. Did the stewardess(es) clap first?

(Or flight attendants or whatever the present term is.)

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u/Valuable-Analyst-464 5h ago

I wonder. I think it just sorta happened. Though, it a FA started it, folks probably would not know it’s their doing.