I usually was more active in class discussions because it helped me learn (college - not high school). I knew I was often pissing some fellow students off who would rather listen to the prof drone on so they could sleep, but I didn't care.

I am an active learner, not a passive one.

It's impossible for me to pretend that I don't know the answer to the teacher's question, even if I am the only one participating and I look like a dork. Active learner here as well.

That is, when I was learning.

I was a veritable Hermione Granger in school.

I generally knew the answer, but I never cared if anybody else knew I knew the answer so I have no problem remaining silent. Usually if I'm in a class with a group that seems timid to participate I'll jump in early if I think that'll break the ice but then I back off.

In college it was very rare to be in a classroom environment where the teacher was throwing out questions requesting volunteers to answer. Which seems reasonable since nobody actually learns anything in such a system except for the few people for whom the chance to volunteer is motivation to study. If questions were asked the person to answer was determined first. Such a situation used fear to induce studying (not that I ever actually studied).

In high school, teachers just learned not to call on me because I was equally likely to be a smartass as to answer.

My profs have loved me in the last couple years, because I am very active and helpful with the class. I've also offered up a lot of resource links for them to look for free downloads, additional tutorials, etc. It gained me a lot of respect from my classmates too.

The advantages - one of my profs was able to get me some contract work, and I'm now working with a couple classmates on some different projects that may become quite fruitful. :)

With her hair, too :)

This is where my smarts disconnected with the path they could have taken me on. I never cared what my grades were, I knew whether I knew the subject and that was good enough for me.

So I never did homework once I'd done enough to assure myself I knew it. Once I understood how to solve quadratic equations, doing it 20 more times didn't serve me any additional purpose. I'd do more work on research in history classes than most but put no effort in writing the papers.

So I'd lose all those points and then ace the tests. Getting good grades in high school is about the easiest thing in the world but I still graduated with a bit more than a 3.0 average. Then repeated in college and to a lesser extent grad school (lesser because there was less "homework" in grad school).

What's weird is I had no problem keeping my "brilliance" to myself at school (where at least some people would have been interested in seeing it) but it took me years and years to rein in showing it in social interactions where nobody was interested in seeing it (and I still lose the reins on that too often).

I generally don’t participate in class because there are generally a half dozen or so who *have* to speak on every single issue, regardless of whether they're contributing new content, and I don’t like class running late because I said something and then they needed to have the last word.