A student cracks his knuckles as he leans back in his chair. A few seats away, another grits her teeth in an attempt to restrain from overreacting.

This, along with other scenarios, occurs on a regular basis and not just in the classroom. While one particular grievance may not affect all, everyone experiences vexations, also known as pet peeves.

These everyday annoyances range from chewing with the mouth open to whining. Many students possess one or more of these frustrations and must find a way to deal with them.

While some students feel as if no one else understands their cause for annoyance, many actually do. According to John Williamson, founder of MyPetPeeves, hundreds of thousands of pet peeves have been cataloged since the web site’s conception. This wide range of pet peeves represents people all over the world.

In a recent campus survey, students chose the top three out of 20 different pet peeves that bothered them the most.

Homework assigned over vacation garnered 31.9% of the votes and parents nagging followed with 28.8%. In spite of the top two choices, freshman, Rebekah Wells, discloses her personal peeve.

“It annoys me when people smack their gum loudly,” Rebekah Wells said. “The noises some people make are disgusting.”

While many try to ignore these irritations, the situations sometimes evolve into a widespread frustration.

“In my class, the squeaky tables and tapping of pens seem to be the most annoying to students,” Mike Fenton, math department head, said. “These seem to slightly affect them.”

The occurrence of pet peeves proves unavoidable despite efforts to overlook.

“For everyone, there’s something throughout the day that makes them tick,” Rachel Balint, ’08, said. “I think that pet peeves affect everyone and it’s inescapable.”

However, some students try to eliminate their pet peeve by convincing others of its correctness.

“It annoys me when people think that PCs are better than Macs, because Macs are far superior,” Mitchell Callisch, ’09, said. “I often get myself in arguments about this. Usually, I bring up my points: Macs run more efficiently; their software is better and more intuitive with a friendlier user interface. After that, there isn’t much they can say to defend themselves, except that they like PCs–they are just being stubborn.”

Occasionally, a pet peeve seems to disappear–but not because of personal attempts. According to Williamson, as the culture changes, this affects pet peeves. Several annoyances that once appeared on his message boards no longer turn up in the postings.

However, only certain pet peeves pertain to current culture. Many remain common for their relevance to daily life.

Some habits often create disgust due to the lack of personal hygiene.

“My pet peeve is when people don’t wash their hands after they use the restroom,” said Callisch. “It’s disgusting and passes germs around. Some fail to realize how unhealthy it is.”

While everyone recognizes them, few remain unaware as to how to overcome their peeve and often choose to avoid conflict through tolerance.

“I used to be annoyed when someone chewed with their mouth open,” Balint said. “Now it doesn’t bug me as much; I just try to ignore it and focus my attention elsewhere.”

Beth Banning’s article, Find Happiness-Set Your Pet Peeves Free echoes Balint’s tactics. Banning, co-founder of Focused Attention Incorporated, advises people to focus on hobbies or other areas of life, instead of focusing on the negatives.

Others are forced to overcome a habit viewed by others as a pet peeve.

“I used to say the word ‘like’ a lot,” said Wells. “My dad got really annoyed by it, and finally he decided that every time I said ‘like’ I owed him 5