One second, Professor -- let me just take this call...

When you were in elementary school, one steely glare from your omniscient teacher was probably enough to dissuade you from talking during class or passing a not to your friend.

In college, however, things are not quite as simple: the distractions caused by students in college courses (and the way professors and fellow students deal with them) are more complex.

At Tufts, the most common class disruption is the dreaded mid-class cell phone ring, a distraction that Chemistry Lecturer Chris Morse estimates became a problem "about three years ago."

"I can't stand the sound of cell phones going off," sophomore Lindsay Garmirian said. "It happens in all my classes, even halfway through the semester, and students will still forget to turn their phones off. The sad part is that teachers just try to ignore it."

Some professors feel that this strategy of ignoring the phones is a good one.

"Generally the person feels like crap, so you don't have to do much," Morse said. "[So] I basically just ignore it [when cell phones ring], or sometimes I'll glare or make a catty comment."

Morse's strategy in dealing with cell phone interruptions may be effective: "At the beginning of the semester, there's usually about one call a day in my class [of 300 students]," he said. "As the semester wears on, people get a lot better with that."

Some professors, however, may be more likely to ridicule a student with a ringing cell phone. According to students in Professor Richard Eichenberg's Public Opinion and Foreign Policy class, Eichenberg becomes angry and "starts making fun of us" when cell phones go off.

At Tufts and other universities, distractions from cell phones and other sources tend to occur more often in lecture classes than smaller ones, possibly because students feel more relaxed and comfortable in a setting where the professor's focus might not be on one individual.

There are exceptions to the rule, however: "In the French 2 class that I took, there were four or five students whose phones rang every day in class," Morse said. "They would then run out of the 13-person class to answer the phone, and on several occasions, had the conversation right there in class while the teacher was talking in French -- once it was during a student's presentation."

Some students' cell phones even ring during exams: "During exams... phones usually go off several times, which I'm... surprised at," Morse said. Especially during exams, cell phone rings can make concentrating -- on the behalf of both the students and the professor -- difficult.

The University has no standard policy on the use of cell phones during classes. Thus, student cell phone etiquette rests on the notions of common sense, courtesy, and maximizing one's own learning experience.

Other schools, however, have found more concrete ways to deal with cell phones and other classroom disruptions. At the University of Arizona, school officers put together a video that showcases the most disruptive things students do in classrooms. The video was based on student feedback regarding their opinions of noise disruptions.

"I don't think it should be made a policy enforced by the school of how students should show respect," English Professor Andrea Humphrey said. "I think it should come from individual teachers because some teachers are more relaxed then others."

Humphrey herself has set down some rules for her English 3 class. "Some of the most common [disruptions] include students coming in late," Humphrey said. "I teach three times a week at 9:25 for a class of 12 students, so any disruption would affect the whole class."

In order to prevent such disruptions, "on the syllabus, I enforce that three late [arrivals] equal an absence," Humphrey said. "If the side talking and falling asleep during class get to be too much, it will start to reflect on [students'] grades."

"I just wish students would take their education more seriously," she said.