Something next to normal, that's the thing I'd like to try

My undergrad is in history, so I had to take a few political science classes as well. There was always this one guy who went off on tangents over EVERYTHING and was always trying (or so it seemed) to derail the lecture narrative so he could discuss/debate some point. At first I thought this guy must be brilliant if he could follow all the new info plus the crap he came up with on his own. Then we got our first test scores back and he was stymied (as evidenced by much grousing) to get a very low C. Apparently, tangents just don't work in a test over the facts and the basics. You have to actually learn the material. Go figure.