10:00: I'm currently in my English class listening to my professor speak passionately about an important literary topic, although he mumbles so much that I'm not sure whether he's talking about Hamlet or about how cute the Care Bears are (so cute!). But every few minutes, like a dolphin resurfacing for air, I can understand a word he says, and, like a dolphin, I become so excited that I flop around and squeak for fish. This tends to draw attention to me, so I stop, though not before growing very hungry in the process. It's really a shame students don't actively bring fish to class anymore.
10:20: Classes are way too long. I've been sitting here for 20 minutes, and there's an entire half-hour left. I don't think murderers are imprisoned for this long. At the very least, inmates are allowed to shower, while I, not having showered because I woke up at 9:57 a.m. for a 10:00 class, am receiving strange stares because I'm attracting flies and wild bears.
10:23: I just realized I'm in a physics class. I'm going to leave.
10:27: I found the right classroom. The teacher still doesn't make much sense, but at least this one is wearing pants. As I look around, 72 percent of students are either sleeping or checking Facebook on their laptops. In all seriousness, if you sit in the back of a lecture hall, you'll notice that at least half of the students with computers are browsing Facebook. The fact that so many people are addicted to Facebook scares me. Ever since the Web site unleashed the News Feed feature, Facebook stalkers are now updated about everything you do, including joining a new group, sneezing and sexually daydreaming about Care Bears. Except for the third activity, these are not things I want people to know about.
Most professors don't berate students for such inattention, and I like that. Occasionally you'll have a professor who is insulted by this apathy, for whatever reason. I once had a teacher grab someone's cell phone when it rang, drop it into his Nalgene water bottle and throw it against the wall. The whole shenanigan was a joke with a teaching assistant's old cell phone, but this didn't prevent us students from silencing our phones and hiding them in a soundproof insane asylum, just in case.
The class I'm in is a lecture class, and I've always enjoyed these more than small TA discussion sections, wherein students convene to offer their opinions on a topic, which would be fine if people weren't dumb. I'm not trying to be cynical here, it's just that -- and I do it too -- it's hard to consistently produce astute and intelligent comments in forced situations. When students are asked to speak, therefore, often the most brilliant statement they can muster is, "This image symbolizes death." Which, of course, would be a great response in a Shakespeare class, but works poorly when used in Education 201.
I usually don't take notes in discussion classes, and when I do, I find they consist of trivial phrases such as, "Mark hates 'Beowulf.' Then he left for the bathroom and returned a little while later. His hands were slightly wet." I guess it's my own fault for not employing discretion with my note-taking, but I'm always afraid the TA will pop-quiz us about the number of times Meredith forgot what she was going to say.
10:28: At about this time in the lecture I lose all focus. My notes become unintelligible. The following comes directly from my notebook: "Whitman was an American poet who ... dinner tonight with Lucy? Wait, is her name even Lucy? Greco-Roman wresting, then, is a complex Chinese past time that ... hold on, am I shirtless?"
If only the teachers would realize the only people still listening are the sign-language translators, and that's because it's their job. As for the students, we're not being paid. We actually have to pay money to sit here! Oh the irony!
10:41: Class is almost over. Even the lecturer has fallen asleep; the projector is his pillow. The translators are attempting to translate guttural yawns, but soon stop when they notice there are no deaf people in the room.
10:44: I just realized I'm in a Spanish class. I'm going to leave.
10:48: I found the right classroom. My notebook is out, ready for notes. For some reason, people just stood up. Very strange. At first I thought class might be over, but now that I think about it, they appear to be running from the wild bears I am attracting.
Chris' columns run Mondays. He can be reached at shuptrine@cavalierdaily.com.
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