I’m beginning to realize that studying education at the graduate level is one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Half the time I just do not give one solitary shit about what is being discussed. Maybe actually all of the time I do not give one solitary shit about it, but about 50% of the time I have genuinely no idea what anyone is talking about. At first I thought it was the accents. “Oh, don’t worry,” I thought to myself, “these people have trouble pronouncing the letter ‘R’ so of course you don’t understand it when they say things like ‘zone of proximal development.’” But now that I’m nearing the end of my program, I’m beginning to realize the flaw with that statement.
No, as it turns out, 50% of the time I don’t give a shit and the other 50% of the time I’m too stupid even to figure out if a shit is indeed given. What these statistics mean is that I’ve spent about 100% of my time during lectures and classes absent-mindedly drawing hand turkey after hand turkey. When people in America ask me what I learned over in England, I’m going to have to tell them that I learned only two things: 1) Public transportation is fabulous in Europe, and 2) My fingers are so fat they look like lumpy sausages when traced onto paper.
In my future as a teacher I’m not entirely sure where these two facts are going to help me. And I suppose that’s been my problem with this course; I don’t particularly want abstract knowledge about education—no, I want abstract knowledge about religion and theology, but when it comes to education I just want you to tell me quickly and simply how I can get the kids not to resort to cannibalism during my lessons. Instead of providing this information, however, the university forces us to sit through lecture after pointless lecture on how data is recorded, or how newly qualified teachers feel their learning is shaped, or different theories of education and whatnot.
Now let’s take a trip back to my classroom. See, I still have literally not a single clue what to do when a child asks me if they can go to the bathroom. I quite honestly worry about getting asked for bathroom permission during every lesson, because my hair falls out as I panic over whether or not the child asking me genuinely has to pee or if they are just trying to go off and do drugs in the toilet or run around in oncoming traffic or whatever it is children do when they leave classes when they’re not supposed to. And if they do genuinely have to pee, what if my not allowing them to results in a burst kidney and death or—even worse—wet pants? That would destroy the child’s social credibility, and I would probably feel so guilty that I’d develop such a bad drinking problem that even British people would think it was a drinking problem. SO PLEASE DO NOT ASK ME IF YOU CAN GO TO THE LOO, ENGLISH CHILD, BECAUSE I CANNOT HANDLE THIS LEVEL OF RESPONSIBILITY!!!
But no. No one tells me how to handle my students’ requests to use the restroom. Instead they give me endless metaphors about how I will feel during my NQT year, all of them involving sunflowers.
Today during our lecture I descended into depths of boredom not seen since my university biology lectures. After briefly considering resorting once more to forming yet another assembly-line-of-one for the production of hand turkeys, I realized that I could have much more fun during lecture by pretending to enjoy myself.
So instead of reclining in my seat to the point where my ass was nearly off the edge, I sat up straight, leaned forward, and tried to maintain a level of eye contact with the lecturer that suggested that I was sexually attracted to him. With every sentence he read in a monotone voice off his boring-ass slides, I nodded enthusiastically with a Disney princess smile on my face. Had he been right in front of me and not separated by about 20 rows of students, I would have reached out, grabbed him, and sung into his face, “PLEASE TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE SOURCES TO WHICH NEWLY QUALIFIED TEACHERS ATTRIBUTE THEIR LEARNING!” Then there’d be a key change, the music would swell, and then I’d sing, “I AM SO ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT LEARNING ABOUT WHAT MAKES A GOOD CONTEXT FOR LEARNING AS A NEWLY QUALIFIED TEACHER!”
As it was, I was in the very last row of the lecture theater. And so I had to resort to swooning with delight with every word, and rushing to capture with my pen every single one of his many gems. He clicked his Powerpoint presentation and yet another picture of a sunflower popped up. “GASP!” I said, grabbing my desk for support. I fucking love sunflowers! I love learning about NQT feelings!!!
I wish that I hadn’t felt slightly sick to my stomach at the end of the presentation. I would have loved to have given him a standing ovation.
Showing posts with label lecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lecture. Show all posts
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Back in college
Back during my quick stint as a film major at college I had a really good looking professor. Staring at this man during class made all those hours of pretentious films that we had to watch allllll worth it. But as hot as he was, and as much as I dubbed Fridays "Hot Prof Day" because I had his class and another looker's class, this guy was a shit teacher.
Okay, maybe that's a bit unfair. Having gained a bit of teaching experience myself now, I have a lot more sympathy for him than I did back when I was 19. I realize now that sometimes students will make contributions in class for which all the best pedagogical theorists agree the only appropriate response is "What the fuck are you talking about?" And I also realize that sometimes kids will ask questions that I have to wonder what language they're speaking in. And frequently when you ask kids for an answer to a question they'll come up with some answer so horribly WRONG that only Satan himself could have planted it in the child's head.
So anyway, this professor would have us screen our short films in front of the class. My one and only film made as a film major was about a Jew getting so pissed off about Campus Crusade for Christ that he ends up leading an exodus to Skokie, IL. But you didn't really need to know that.
Anyway, after each film was screened the professor would flip on just one of the lights. There he'd stand, only half of him lit by a small pool of weak, orange light in an otherwise dark room, and he'd spout off awkward comments. Trying to express an interest in our beginners' work but clearly not sure how, he'd say things like, "Wow. So what was up with [*insert the worst part of a student's project*]?" He didn't say much, usually just one line, but the one line was without fail unintentionally awful. The sort of thing that would make you want to step outside, go up to the water outside, and slowly immerse yourself in Lake Michigan and never come up for air. Then, silently gloating over someone else's failure while also realizing that we were next, the audience of film students would sit in awkward stillness, someone would cough uncomfortably, another person would give a good ol' SNUUUUURF to remedy their runny nose caused by the Midwestern winter, and then the professor would ask us to put on the next film.
Repeat for each film.
Besides Professor HotStuff and his awkward comments though, there were a lot of other things to look forward to when it came to film class. And when I say a lot of other things I really just mean Penny*. Or maybe it was Penni. Or Peny? I don't know. Penny seems too normal for this girl, one of my dear film classmates. I remain fully convinced that she was a very nice person, but my God was she delightfully bizarre. Years from now when I'm old and gray and about to die alone in my house with my 500 cats (all of whom I will detest), I think her coats are what I will remember about this period of my life.
What I remember is that she would wear enormous fur coats. Like, MASSIVE fur coats. They were usually cut short, almost a bit like crop top fur coat. She had several different fur coats, but the one thing they all had in common was that they all made her look like a yeti. I always used to anticipate her arrival to class because she was one of those people who is physically incapable of arriving on time to anything, so every Friday she would waltz in about 20 minutes late like it ain't no thang, and she would disrobe. And off would come an absolutely ENORMOUS and unspeakably furry coat. And then it would take her another five minutes for the coat to be lovingly tucked into a vacant seat like it was not just an enormous collection of dead, fluffy animal skins but instead a pile of fluffy and inanimate puppies. I mean, I was a theatre/film major--I loved a good production, and this definitely counted.
I'm also convinced that she had some sort of a religious obligation to have at least 10 animals on her at any given moment, much like a Sikh's Five Ks. On one memorable occasion I watched her take off a gigantic light brown fur coat only to find that she was wearing a suede hippie-indian vest. With colorful embroidery. And which was lined with even more yeti fur.
I also liked the pillbox hats that she would wear. They were exactly like what Jackie Kennedy used to wear, except that Penny's had the same texture as latex. And they were metallic and neon. They looked a bit like what I would imagine we think hookers would have worn in the 1960s (regardless of how they may have actually dressed.
Anyway, that was my undergraduate experience. Just thought you should know.
.
Okay, maybe that's a bit unfair. Having gained a bit of teaching experience myself now, I have a lot more sympathy for him than I did back when I was 19. I realize now that sometimes students will make contributions in class for which all the best pedagogical theorists agree the only appropriate response is "What the fuck are you talking about?" And I also realize that sometimes kids will ask questions that I have to wonder what language they're speaking in. And frequently when you ask kids for an answer to a question they'll come up with some answer so horribly WRONG that only Satan himself could have planted it in the child's head.
So anyway, this professor would have us screen our short films in front of the class. My one and only film made as a film major was about a Jew getting so pissed off about Campus Crusade for Christ that he ends up leading an exodus to Skokie, IL. But you didn't really need to know that.
Anyway, after each film was screened the professor would flip on just one of the lights. There he'd stand, only half of him lit by a small pool of weak, orange light in an otherwise dark room, and he'd spout off awkward comments. Trying to express an interest in our beginners' work but clearly not sure how, he'd say things like, "Wow. So what was up with [*insert the worst part of a student's project*]?" He didn't say much, usually just one line, but the one line was without fail unintentionally awful. The sort of thing that would make you want to step outside, go up to the water outside, and slowly immerse yourself in Lake Michigan and never come up for air. Then, silently gloating over someone else's failure while also realizing that we were next, the audience of film students would sit in awkward stillness, someone would cough uncomfortably, another person would give a good ol' SNUUUUURF to remedy their runny nose caused by the Midwestern winter, and then the professor would ask us to put on the next film.
Repeat for each film.
Besides Professor HotStuff and his awkward comments though, there were a lot of other things to look forward to when it came to film class. And when I say a lot of other things I really just mean Penny*. Or maybe it was Penni. Or Peny? I don't know. Penny seems too normal for this girl, one of my dear film classmates. I remain fully convinced that she was a very nice person, but my God was she delightfully bizarre. Years from now when I'm old and gray and about to die alone in my house with my 500 cats (all of whom I will detest), I think her coats are what I will remember about this period of my life.
What I remember is that she would wear enormous fur coats. Like, MASSIVE fur coats. They were usually cut short, almost a bit like crop top fur coat. She had several different fur coats, but the one thing they all had in common was that they all made her look like a yeti. I always used to anticipate her arrival to class because she was one of those people who is physically incapable of arriving on time to anything, so every Friday she would waltz in about 20 minutes late like it ain't no thang, and she would disrobe. And off would come an absolutely ENORMOUS and unspeakably furry coat. And then it would take her another five minutes for the coat to be lovingly tucked into a vacant seat like it was not just an enormous collection of dead, fluffy animal skins but instead a pile of fluffy and inanimate puppies. I mean, I was a theatre/film major--I loved a good production, and this definitely counted.
I'm also convinced that she had some sort of a religious obligation to have at least 10 animals on her at any given moment, much like a Sikh's Five Ks. On one memorable occasion I watched her take off a gigantic light brown fur coat only to find that she was wearing a suede hippie-indian vest. With colorful embroidery. And which was lined with even more yeti fur.
I also liked the pillbox hats that she would wear. They were exactly like what Jackie Kennedy used to wear, except that Penny's had the same texture as latex. And they were metallic and neon. They looked a bit like what I would imagine we think hookers would have worn in the 1960s (regardless of how they may have actually dressed.
Anyway, that was my undergraduate experience. Just thought you should know.
.
Friday, November 4, 2011
And then Julia went home and sobbed quietly as she hugged her knees on the floor of the shower
Our last education lecture can only be described as a machinegun fire of awkward, uncomfortable and just generally unfunny jokes and comments. A couple times a week all 180 of us are locked into a claustrophobe’s nightmare, this horrific lecture theater with rows so tight that, come Hell or high water or the Apocalypse, once you’re in you’re in it until everyone else in your row decides to leave, and we are forced to listen to someone drone on and on for a little over an hour about how to deal with kids with problems*. Because apparently there are absolutely no healthy or “normal” children in the entire county.
*I probably shouldn’t say that they talk about “how to deal with kids with problems.” These lectures rarely offer useful solutions, and instead it’s more like an hour of simply being told that these problems exist. So rather than a lecture on “how to deal with kids with problems” it’s a lecture on “Kids have problems—deal with it.”
Anyway, this Thursday’s lecture was particularly awful. It was given by two people, one boring lady named Julia and one socially inept artard that I’m going to call Carla because I can’t be bothered to remember what her actual name was. And I’ve found that socially inept people tend to be named Carla—that is, of course, when they’re not named Samantha.
See, this bitch actually talked about having piles, which (based on the translation I received) are like hemorrhoids or perhaps some other form of unpleasant butt sore unique to the British. I mean, even I know not to talk of ass sores in polite company, and this is coming from someone who the other day, probably trying (misguidedly) to propose an interesting topic of conversation rather than trying to be malicious, mentioned to someone how their last name looked a bit like “to fart” in French. So for me of all people to think, “Wow, that person really crossed the boundaries of appropriateness,” that person must have the social skills of Rain Man.
I’ll tell you what it felt like. It felt like when you’re in a public restroom and the lady in the next stall over is chatting on her cell phone. You feel horribly violated, not only for your own sake but also for the sake of the poor bastard on the other end of the line who probably won’t realize that he’s being violated until the cell phone picks up the sound of the toilet flushing. And suddenly the cheerful/friendly/businesslike tone of the conversation descends into a feeling of, “Oh God….you weren’t….were you?”
That’s basically what this lecture was like. First we were chatting away about ADHD and how to shoot Ritalin into kids, and then Carla decides to pull the figurative toilet flush handle (by mentioning dealing with painful ass syndrome) and then we poor souls in the audience have that feeling of “Oh God…you didn’t just….? God, you did…”
What was really delightful about this whole lecture though was that whenever Carla/this bitch would make an awkward comment about colorectal issues that she should really bring up with her GP instead of with 180 trainee teachers, or whenever she would make a joke about something random that fell flat or whenever her endless stories got boring, she would then turn to Julia and say something like, “…isn’t that right, Julia?” or “am I right, Julia?”
And poor Julia, who clearly should be in the running for sainthood now, just had a look on her face, that weary and glazed look of a government employee that seems to say, “There is no fucking way I’m getting paid enough for this shit.”
So while I’m not entirely sure I learned anything new about ADHD or how to deal with kids bouncing off the walls, I have learned one thing: that from now on when I make an awkward or TMI comment I’m going follow up the awkward silence with, “…isn’t that right, Julia? Or “Julia knows what I’m talking about.”
*I probably shouldn’t say that they talk about “how to deal with kids with problems.” These lectures rarely offer useful solutions, and instead it’s more like an hour of simply being told that these problems exist. So rather than a lecture on “how to deal with kids with problems” it’s a lecture on “Kids have problems—deal with it.”
Anyway, this Thursday’s lecture was particularly awful. It was given by two people, one boring lady named Julia and one socially inept artard that I’m going to call Carla because I can’t be bothered to remember what her actual name was. And I’ve found that socially inept people tend to be named Carla—that is, of course, when they’re not named Samantha.
See, this bitch actually talked about having piles, which (based on the translation I received) are like hemorrhoids or perhaps some other form of unpleasant butt sore unique to the British. I mean, even I know not to talk of ass sores in polite company, and this is coming from someone who the other day, probably trying (misguidedly) to propose an interesting topic of conversation rather than trying to be malicious, mentioned to someone how their last name looked a bit like “to fart” in French. So for me of all people to think, “Wow, that person really crossed the boundaries of appropriateness,” that person must have the social skills of Rain Man.
I’ll tell you what it felt like. It felt like when you’re in a public restroom and the lady in the next stall over is chatting on her cell phone. You feel horribly violated, not only for your own sake but also for the sake of the poor bastard on the other end of the line who probably won’t realize that he’s being violated until the cell phone picks up the sound of the toilet flushing. And suddenly the cheerful/friendly/businesslike tone of the conversation descends into a feeling of, “Oh God….you weren’t….were you?”
That’s basically what this lecture was like. First we were chatting away about ADHD and how to shoot Ritalin into kids, and then Carla decides to pull the figurative toilet flush handle (by mentioning dealing with painful ass syndrome) and then we poor souls in the audience have that feeling of “Oh God…you didn’t just….? God, you did…”
What was really delightful about this whole lecture though was that whenever Carla/this bitch would make an awkward comment about colorectal issues that she should really bring up with her GP instead of with 180 trainee teachers, or whenever she would make a joke about something random that fell flat or whenever her endless stories got boring, she would then turn to Julia and say something like, “…isn’t that right, Julia?” or “am I right, Julia?”
And poor Julia, who clearly should be in the running for sainthood now, just had a look on her face, that weary and glazed look of a government employee that seems to say, “There is no fucking way I’m getting paid enough for this shit.”
So while I’m not entirely sure I learned anything new about ADHD or how to deal with kids bouncing off the walls, I have learned one thing: that from now on when I make an awkward or TMI comment I’m going follow up the awkward silence with, “…isn’t that right, Julia? Or “Julia knows what I’m talking about.”
Thursday, November 3, 2011
This one time, this dude totally fell asleep in intro to hinduism
At some point we’re going to need a serious post about the fact that a member of staff just casually dropped an anti-Semitic remark like it ain’t no thang. I am, however, feeling a little ill (I wish I could claim that the shock of the remark on my Jew-soul gave me this cold, but unfortunately I’ve been sick for a couple days now), so instead I give you an edited version of a previous bit of writing I did.
I thought about it yesterday when I fell asleep during a lecture. In a normal lecture with the about 180 members of my program this wouldn’t be such a big deal, but this particular lecture was with 18 students only. When I woke up I thought maybe I’d gotten away with it, but when I made eye-contact with the lecturer she gave me a pretty undeniable glare.
With that I give you: THIS ONE TIME THIS DUDE TOTALLY FELL ASLEEP IN INTRO TO HINDUISM
Today during lecture--given by an Italian guy that I like to think of as Professor Mario Brothers--I noticed that my neighbor had fallen asleep on the shoulder of his other neighbor. She seemed slightly annoyed by it, but they were acquaintances so she wasn't too upset by it. I laughed, thankful for myself and amused at someone else's misfortune. I also liked that we were in the second row, the Splash Zone if you will, since you're so close to the professor that if he spits when he talks you will get wet. It's like the first few rows at Sea World or a Gallagher performance. Anyway, if you ask me (and you are asking me because this is my blog), to fall asleep within any professor's Splash Zone takes chutzpa to a new level. Instead of discretely dozing off in the back few rows of a huge lecture hall where the professor's weak eyes won't notice your closed ones, you choose to position yourself close enough to the professor that his lapel microphone can pick up your snoring.
Anyway, after a lengthy mental digression, my thoughts returned to the subject of the lecture. Well, actually my thoughts returned to their normal subject during that class--noting which words the professor has trouble pronouncing. But then something horrible happened. I sensed my neighbor shift in his seat. And then, horror of horrors, I noticed his head sleepily traveling from his other neighbor's shoulder towards me.
For any stranger reading this blog, you have to understand that I don't like being touched. It's not about germaphobia....I don't know if I have OCD or if I'm just weird, all I know is that I don't like being hugged, I don't even like handshakes, and I just generally do not like people who get too close to me. I usually make a genuine effort to forget about this problem when I'm around friends and family, but even with my own brother I would get very upset when he would fall asleep on my shoulder during car trips. So you can imagine how horrifying it was to see a stranger's head approaching and looking to do that very thing.
In fact, here's the theme from Jaws to provide a soundtrack for what I'll write next:
And so his head slowly advanced towards my shoulder. No no no, I prayed silently, please dear God....Buddha....Jesus....Krishna....whoever. Please for the love of all that is holy do not let him reach my shoulder. But my prayers fell on deaf ears. I had to come up with an escape and quickly, because I only had seconds left before his head made contact with my shoulder. Realizing that I was sitting in an aisle seat, I figured I could just lean out of my seat towards the aisle. Surely his head would stop its journey eventually, and I could just sort of huddle in my corner. And so I leaned out....and his head kept coming. So I leaned out more.....and his head kept coming. Eventually it got to the point where I was leaning so far out over my armrest that I resembled a damp towel on a clothesline....or like a fat, dead fish just kind of flopped out, with my fat bulging over the sides of the armrest. This was as far as I could go without flipping over my armrest. And trust me, I considered it. I wasn't sure if the armrest could hold my fat, but I just held on and prayed that the advancing head would stop.
But it didn't. The head finally landed on my shoulder. Actually at this point, because of my sort of weird crouched/reclined posture it landed on my hip/arm. But whatever, all that matters was that a stranger was now sleeping on me. There were a few minutes where I silently thought about what to do, if I had to wake him up or if I would just have to suffer through class, when suddenly and completely involuntarily my body, as if deciding to take matters into its own hands, just had a spasm. It was the sort of spasm that wasn't dramatic enough for the people around me to notice, but it was strong enough to wake up Sleeping Beauty, who suddenly bolted upright, snorted and said something like, "Huh? What?"
And then about two seconds later he had conked out once more. Thankfully he didn't use my shoulder as a pillow again, but I kept a wary eye on him for the rest of class just in case. It became apparent, however, that this guy was incapable of sleeping without a shoulder-pillow, because for the rest of class he would sort of doze off....his head would sort of drift backwards...and then BOOM! His whole body would seize--like literally the whole body would seize, and his arms and head would flail around--and he'd sit upright, completely startled and awake. And then within a few seconds the process would repeat itself. I spent a few minutes watching his cycle of falling asleep, then suddenly completely spazzing out, trying to stay awake, and falling asleep again, and I imagined he was probably thinking to himself, ZzzzZzzZzzzz *SNORT!* HUH??? Where am I? Oh shit, was I sleeping in class? Okay, I can't fall asleep again, I gotta stay awake....but....but maybe it'll help me concentrate if I just sorta tilt my head back and....zzZzzZzzzzZZZzzzz."
While this cycle took a few minutes for each revolution during the beginning of class, by the end of class it was happening every couple of seconds. Honestly, I even entertained the thought that he was having a seizure. But once I realized that he was indeed still just falling asleep and waking up repeatedly, I started laughing. In the middle of lecture. Which was about burning widows on pyres in Hinduism.
I looked around me and realized that no one in this 100 person lecture even noticed the guy who was having what looked like seizures every couple of seconds. If you ask me, not noticing stuff like that is a waste of coming to lecture.
/
I thought about it yesterday when I fell asleep during a lecture. In a normal lecture with the about 180 members of my program this wouldn’t be such a big deal, but this particular lecture was with 18 students only. When I woke up I thought maybe I’d gotten away with it, but when I made eye-contact with the lecturer she gave me a pretty undeniable glare.
With that I give you: THIS ONE TIME THIS DUDE TOTALLY FELL ASLEEP IN INTRO TO HINDUISM
Today during lecture--given by an Italian guy that I like to think of as Professor Mario Brothers--I noticed that my neighbor had fallen asleep on the shoulder of his other neighbor. She seemed slightly annoyed by it, but they were acquaintances so she wasn't too upset by it. I laughed, thankful for myself and amused at someone else's misfortune. I also liked that we were in the second row, the Splash Zone if you will, since you're so close to the professor that if he spits when he talks you will get wet. It's like the first few rows at Sea World or a Gallagher performance. Anyway, if you ask me (and you are asking me because this is my blog), to fall asleep within any professor's Splash Zone takes chutzpa to a new level. Instead of discretely dozing off in the back few rows of a huge lecture hall where the professor's weak eyes won't notice your closed ones, you choose to position yourself close enough to the professor that his lapel microphone can pick up your snoring.
Anyway, after a lengthy mental digression, my thoughts returned to the subject of the lecture. Well, actually my thoughts returned to their normal subject during that class--noting which words the professor has trouble pronouncing. But then something horrible happened. I sensed my neighbor shift in his seat. And then, horror of horrors, I noticed his head sleepily traveling from his other neighbor's shoulder towards me.
For any stranger reading this blog, you have to understand that I don't like being touched. It's not about germaphobia....I don't know if I have OCD or if I'm just weird, all I know is that I don't like being hugged, I don't even like handshakes, and I just generally do not like people who get too close to me. I usually make a genuine effort to forget about this problem when I'm around friends and family, but even with my own brother I would get very upset when he would fall asleep on my shoulder during car trips. So you can imagine how horrifying it was to see a stranger's head approaching and looking to do that very thing.
In fact, here's the theme from Jaws to provide a soundtrack for what I'll write next:
And so his head slowly advanced towards my shoulder. No no no, I prayed silently, please dear God....Buddha....Jesus....Krishna....whoever. Please for the love of all that is holy do not let him reach my shoulder. But my prayers fell on deaf ears. I had to come up with an escape and quickly, because I only had seconds left before his head made contact with my shoulder. Realizing that I was sitting in an aisle seat, I figured I could just lean out of my seat towards the aisle. Surely his head would stop its journey eventually, and I could just sort of huddle in my corner. And so I leaned out....and his head kept coming. So I leaned out more.....and his head kept coming. Eventually it got to the point where I was leaning so far out over my armrest that I resembled a damp towel on a clothesline....or like a fat, dead fish just kind of flopped out, with my fat bulging over the sides of the armrest. This was as far as I could go without flipping over my armrest. And trust me, I considered it. I wasn't sure if the armrest could hold my fat, but I just held on and prayed that the advancing head would stop.
But it didn't. The head finally landed on my shoulder. Actually at this point, because of my sort of weird crouched/reclined posture it landed on my hip/arm. But whatever, all that matters was that a stranger was now sleeping on me. There were a few minutes where I silently thought about what to do, if I had to wake him up or if I would just have to suffer through class, when suddenly and completely involuntarily my body, as if deciding to take matters into its own hands, just had a spasm. It was the sort of spasm that wasn't dramatic enough for the people around me to notice, but it was strong enough to wake up Sleeping Beauty, who suddenly bolted upright, snorted and said something like, "Huh? What?"
And then about two seconds later he had conked out once more. Thankfully he didn't use my shoulder as a pillow again, but I kept a wary eye on him for the rest of class just in case. It became apparent, however, that this guy was incapable of sleeping without a shoulder-pillow, because for the rest of class he would sort of doze off....his head would sort of drift backwards...and then BOOM! His whole body would seize--like literally the whole body would seize, and his arms and head would flail around--and he'd sit upright, completely startled and awake. And then within a few seconds the process would repeat itself. I spent a few minutes watching his cycle of falling asleep, then suddenly completely spazzing out, trying to stay awake, and falling asleep again, and I imagined he was probably thinking to himself, ZzzzZzzZzzzz *SNORT!* HUH??? Where am I? Oh shit, was I sleeping in class? Okay, I can't fall asleep again, I gotta stay awake....but....but maybe it'll help me concentrate if I just sorta tilt my head back and....zzZzzZzzzzZZZzzzz."
While this cycle took a few minutes for each revolution during the beginning of class, by the end of class it was happening every couple of seconds. Honestly, I even entertained the thought that he was having a seizure. But once I realized that he was indeed still just falling asleep and waking up repeatedly, I started laughing. In the middle of lecture. Which was about burning widows on pyres in Hinduism.
I looked around me and realized that no one in this 100 person lecture even noticed the guy who was having what looked like seizures every couple of seconds. If you ask me, not noticing stuff like that is a waste of coming to lecture.
/
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