Super Powers and Poisonous Frogs

I think I've mentioned before that the students taking animal science classes are overwhelmingly female. There is nothing inherently wrong with that but it's always nice to have a balance. So I was quite pleased to find out at the beginning of the term that the grad students taking the biostatistics course come from departments all over campus. The class is comprised of about 30% men--still skewed but reasonable. Students in public health, social sciences, and some of the other physical sciences are required to take the class so it has a pretty large enrollment every fall term, around 70 or so total.

We meet twice a week for lecture and once a week for a lab which is taught by a TA (teaching assistant, a grad student hopefully familiar with the course content). In lab, we learn how to use a specialized computer program to calculate various statistics. The lab content generally runs a lecture or two ahead of the lecture content. But for most labs, the TA gives us a quick crash course to introduce just enough of the new concepts so we can run the program and do that week's lab assignment.

Totally by chance, in my lab section, there is only one guy. He's memorable by that fact alone but there is something else that really sets this guy apart. He has a super power the likes of which I've never seen before.

He sucks the intelligence out of your very marrow if you sit within six feet of him. Sit right next to him and you are doomed. 

He's also a whiner. This serves as a convenient warning flag rather like the brilliant coloration of poisonous rainforest frogs. 

He complains vocally, loudly, petulantly, about everything he doesn't understand, which is everything. If you aren't paying attention to the warning flag and you happen to sit near him, or even worse, choose to do so, you get what you deserve: all your intelligence will disappear in a matter of minutes.

Today he compared reading the textbook to reading a "user's manual for an electric toothbrush in Cantonese". His exact words. I suspect that he believes himself to be clever and amusing but I find him embarrassing. I want to tell him to grow up, shut up, and listen. But I'm afraid to get too close.