How To: Random Lectures

You know what the hardest part of college is? Having to pay attention to stuff you would never care about in a million years. Yet somehow, you find yourself taking a class in astrophysics, and apparently you have to go to lectures.

I actually don't have this problem, firstly because my college doesn't offer courses in astrophysics (that I'm aware of), and secondly because my college isn't really big enough to offer lecture classes on a regular basis. I do, however, occasionally have to attend a lecture for my pseudo-English class, as I so endearingly call it to people outside my college circle who may or may not know what Paideia means. And when this happens, I wonder how people can possibly survive these things on a daily basis.

I'd like to point out that my pseudo-English class usually is held in a small classroom with 15 other students like myself, although varying just slightly enough to where we have a kid who compared Frankenstein's monster to a chicken nugget. It's supposed to be a discussion class in which we discuss the answer to the question, "What does it mean to be human?" by reading various books and primary sources. Sounds like your basic English class. But alas! It is a pseudo-English. (Honestly, I just like the prefix pseudo.) Anyway.

And so when we start a new reading, we have to go a lecture. All the students who have the class at the same time gather in our largest lecture hall which, if I remember correctly holds about 150. And then they talk to us for an hour. Surviving can be a challenge.

I first recommend that you don't take notes at all. Because note-taking can be very distracting. You can listen more thoroughly if you don't try to write down what the professor is saying and what the powerpoint is saying and what you are thinking. That's just too much multitasking for even the brightest of the people. (And who invented powerpoint anyway? Their thought process must be like this: "Ooh! Let me put words on a screen, the same words that I'm going to be saying, but when I say them, I'll alter them just slightly enough to make the students wonder which version of events I actually meant to emphasize." Stupid powerpoint. We should just stick to chalk. Except it gets your hands all dusty.)

When you've decided to not take notes, you should still keep your notebook out, because you don't want to start a non-note-taker revolution at your school. Other kids who are still under the delusion that some time in the future they may look back at their notes and find something of value other than a random scribble are (highly confused, yes, but also) still in the optimistic phase of their schooling careers. Maybe you can doodle a little bit. I actually think doodling stimulates the mind. Maybe doodle a cow. Or a turtle. Or a turtle riding on a cow. Or a turtle wearing socks and riding on a cow. But that just may be too complicated if you're not considering being an art major, and you should probably just stick to flowers and suns.

Sometimes, even if it's the most horrible thing in the world, you should look at the professor who is giving the lecture. Otherwise, it's easy to completely lose track of the point. Actually, by this time, you've probably lost track of the point so far that you can't even remember why you're still sitting in the chair.

After you lose all sense of purpose, you should doodle on your hand. I advise stick people on each of your fingers because then you can wiggle them around and have a pretend family. And if you're extra skillful/ambidextrous (OH MY GOODNESS, I TOTALLY SPELLED THAT WORD RIGHT ON THE FIRST TRY NOTHING THIS AMAZING HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME IN MY ENTIRE LIFE EVER) you can even have two families of people, one on each hand, and then you can have a whole story! Maybe they're feuding like Romeo and Juliet (of which I don't actually know the story because my English teacher never let us read it, but only made us watch a creepy 1960s version of the movie), or maybe they're best friends, or maybe the parents are going insane because the children want a pet giraffe. Basically, the stick-person-finger-world is open for you to explore. (Also, I honestly just like hyphenating random things. (And I didn't spell hyphenating correctly on the first try. (Thank goodness for spell check.))) (That was totally three parentheses all mashed together. Is that a skill?)

If you do draw on your hand, maybe you should make sure you're either not sitting by anyone who is likely to take a picture of your strangeness and post it on social media, OR you should sit by someone who you don't care if they're likely to take a picture of your strangeness and post it on social media. Probably the first thing is more likely, but good news world! I definitely kind of sat by someone who I wouldn't care if they took a picture of my strangeness and posted it on social media. That's basically like almost having an almost friend.

And when a lecture is over, apparently it's common courtesy to clap for the professor speaker guy? I don't know. (I definitely just spelled courtesy so wrong that spell check didn't have any suggestions for me. All my excitement over that one word is basically gone.) I just hope that one day people clap for me for doing my job. That would be great.

The hardest part, probably, is leaving the lecture hall. Because you might get stampled. That's a mix of the words "stomped" and "trampled". So be careful walking down the stairs. And don't push people. Pushing is for kindergarten. "And in kindergarten, we share everything!" Sorry. That was a reference for my brother. If he read my blog. Which he doesn't. Loser.

Wow. I'm really on a lot of tangents today. Holy moly. I actually just thought of changing the title to, "How To: Random Lectures--Emphasis on the Random, but not on the Lectures" because of how weird this is. But I won't. Because that's too long. You're welcome.

Then you should probably wash off your lovely finger family, especially if you have other places to be. Because it's going to be hard to explain that one.