Saturday, April 17, 2010

How to get through boring lectures- A few brilliant ideas from an English Honours student!

[No offense to the teachers intended! Please don't cut my marks for this! You guys rock! :)]





So you're stuck in a boring lecture (damn the attendance!). No escape from the four walls that bind you, the heat is unbearable (thanks to the fans that refuse to give any sense of cooling no matter what and more often than not, don't really work anyways!), the second hand on your watch seems to count to nine hundred ninety nine before moving forwards and what is being said is Greek to you. What to do?


No fear, the Minstrel is going to divulge some well kept secrets to get through droning lectures alive! These tips and situations may I clarify have no resemblance to real life and even if they do it's purely incidental!

Alright, who am I kidding? Yes, this blog is inspired by the real lives of real people I know! But ha! I shall not divulge the identities so fear not fellow comrades in crime!

So here goes:

1) Grow your hair. No, seriously. Grow it up to shoulder-length and then leave it open. It's a miracle to those who just want to run away from class. It has two practical uses that I know of, and do let me know if there are more:
a) You can just have the flicks out in front of your face which can be a real cover-up in case you doze off!
b) The long tresses can also cover up for your MP3 player headphones that you can sneak in through your top into your ears! Just make sure your eyes are on the teacher and you pretend well that you're listening to the lecture, else if caught unawares you can be in deep shit!


2) Technology as a weapon! Your cellphones can be lifesavers! There is so much to do- play Asphalt or whatever game you like, text your partners in distress attending the same lecture and contemplating jumping out of the window, or text your friends outside your class and crib your heart out, do Facebooking, read PDF books, watch silly videos, whatever!!

3) It is also the perfect time to transfer that song you wanted from your best friend via Bluetooth! And the new pictures you clicked yesterday in the canteen, and a pic of her latest crush, the games you wanted so bad- whatever! These 45 minutes(or however long your lectures are!) are priceless for this stuff! Go utilise it to the max!


4) Make sure your buddies are sitting near you, pass that notebook's last page around and have your own personal wall gossip. These will someday be priceless reminders of your days in class later on when you become old and withered like I have! :P (@ How Rude: You must must make copies of those!)






5) Put your head in your hands and stare at the book and zone out! Keep your eyes open though! (Unless you have The Hair- Shield! Refer to point 1)




6) It's the perfect time to indulge the writer in you. The classroom, along with the loo are like the most inspirational zones for budding artists, writers and poets! Let the creativity burst out! I have written some of my best poems and made some of my best sketches in class and I testify to this fact myself! And as icing on the cake you can pass on the brilliant product of your creative genius around in class to give the others a respite from their misery! Getting some free publicity in the process! (Gosh I'm brilliant!Lol!)

7) The Window: This is a total stress-free zone in class. If you manage to grab the window seat there is nothing like it in the Advanced Skills In Not Paying Attention In Class (ASINPAIC, in short!) There is so much outside the window to focus your mind on that you won't even have to bother wondering what to do to while away your time!

8) Concentrate on the Refreshments. Okay, I'm assuming that you're teachers are as nice as mine were and allow you to get food into class. Grab that cup of cold coffee and a big bag of chips and voila! you're ready for the day! Enjoy the coffee, have fun munching, while looking absolutely attentive and nod everytime the teacher looks at you.

9) Go the Romantics way and let your Imagination overpower your Reason. Forget reality and let your mind sweep you away into distant lands to do wonderful and brilliant things that you might never really get to do in real life! ;)

10) This point is crucial to all the above stated points and thus I'm stating it again. Look absolutely attentive throughout and nod every time the teacher looks at you. Look at your desk when she asks a question or you'll become the sacrificial lamb!Brush up on acting skills if required.

More tips are welcome. A final tip though as a parting word- pay attention if the teacher talks sense! It helps with the marks! :P Yea, really!


P.S.- Another productive use of an unproductive class! Mission Accomplished! :)

12 comments:

Varun said...

You wrote this late. Its been 10 years now, i passed out from school. Why didn't you wrote it earlier....I miss my school days. :(

GhOsTwRiTeR said...

in tip 5- wen u put your head in your hands, close your fists... so that all those (loser) people sitting around you who find it funny to wake you up don't realize you are sleeping and do exactly what i mentioned before...!!
plus, if you are friends with the girl/boy sitting before you (who is preferably, umm, well built), you can ask him/her to adjust their position so that you are well hidden from the teacher (caution: follow this only when you are one of the backbenchers sitting in the row directly in front of the teacher's desk), once you are sure your teacher can't see you, put your head down and doze off till the end of the period.. (ask you partners to wake you up if you move into her line of vision!)

if your teachers are like MINE and don't let ya eat, and if you have a desk which opens up, hide your food in the desk and dig in whenever you want to! (works in my class as when you open your desk, your face also gets hidden from the teachers!!)

all the above works perfectly fine! :) especially after a bit of practice.. :D

AldyWaldy said...

@ Varun: Lol! ! 10 years earlier I wasn't old enough to write this! hehe! Now I'm a more enlightened person so figured I could help out the next generation, rendering some service in public interest in the process!!!:) ;)

AldyWaldy said...

@ Ani: hehe!!! Thanks for sharing these wonderful ideas!!! The readers of my blog will surely appreciate your sharing this wisdom with us! ;P

Pallavi said...

This i really just an addition to what the Minstrel has so rightly stated, but what we usually did was put our lovely ol' profs in skits in our minds or convos from the books we were being tot to see how they'd play out... I mean Zargon, Mexican Faucets (tho conceptualized o/s the class room) were really used later on inside... make up personalized gibberish later to become gang lingo, also think about where u'd go after class plan a lunch... look to the future!

AldyWaldy said...

@ Pallavi: Lol! Yea...n laugh at absurd inside jokes that no one could talk about n think of perverted connotations for everything said! Hehe! Those were the days..
And the gang lingo- "class ke baad?"
"kya plan"
"dont know, u say"
"i dont know u say"
"dunno, what do u wanna do?"
"Knags?"
"too far!"
"d-skool?
"too far! pagal hai kya?"
"nescafe canteen"
"ok"

Hehehe! The herd mentality n indecisiveness, the age of innocence!lol! Boring classrooms breed creativity!
I see our thesis on innovative use of boring lectures is going great guns! :)

Addy said...

damn! how I wish I had this idea before you for my blog.......I strike an idea and find your blog with this post.......talk about.......whatever!
nicely put must say.....this post is close to every college students heart....heck! I may add school students too here!!

AldyWaldy said...

@ Addy: hehe! Thanks! Yea...all of us look for excuses to do bakwaas in class n not pay attention! :)glad you like it!

Nupur said...

Hehe i used to keep nodding and maitain eye contact wid da teacher..and then happily daydream..of course my brain had ths knack for switchng back on when something relevant was being said..so had da bestof both worlds..but honestly i think we were saved a lot of boredom thanks to sheer numbers..da9 of us would occupy the whole corner row remember..and one was never worried abt notes not being complete coz of inattention,. coz there wer enuf ppl one could borrow notebooks from..

D2 said...

knows. But as a slight modification, you can zone out keeping a pen in your hand, and well, the rest is the same! And yeah, the creativity angle is the best point (no. 6). Pity my profs don't allow refreshments in the class, but we do smuggle 'em in and the rest is eating and acting and making sure the smell does not reach the prof's nose!
:D

AldyWaldy said...

@ D2; thanks! yea..the smell of the food is a killer give-away! My classmates in school (once upon a time when food wasn't allowed to be brought onto class!) were caught by the smell that wafted from theor lunchboxes into the teacher's nostrils! lol!

AldyWaldy said...

@ Nups: yea.. nothing can beat that feeling.. I miss our grad classes!!!! When we used to sms each other instead of passing notes, which was later replaced by a notebook used n abused by being made to play the role of the FB Wall! lol! Our notebooks should be made articles of heritage value!!! Gosh! ;)