How NOT TO act in a lecture

Being a Drama student, the one and only formal lecture that I have a week is a 9am Thursday. For a veritable plethora of reasons (Most of which, regrettably, Timepiece Wednesday is responsible for) I’m sure you’ll understand that I’m really not my most charming at this time of the week.

In fact – It’s remarkable how the Thursday 9am can transform me from a generally genial human being into a hung over hag, curled in the corner with tumbleweed hair, jumper on inside out (fetching look), and capable of shanking the next person to look at her in the wrong way. If this strikes a familiar chord – you’ll know that there’s nothing more fundamentally irritating than the person who proceeds to commit the following Lecture offences;

COUGH HYSTERIA:

One person starts; by some magical means the entire room is immediately infected with a telekinetically transferred cough that affects nearly every student. Psychological phenomenon? No it’s some moron. 70% of the lecture theatre who haven’t evolved beyond the age of six, where a Mexican wave cough is aerially contagious.

PEN CLICKING:

I once had a teacher who was so incensed with the mania-inducing staccato of incessant pen clicking that he had a strike system for perpetrators.

Strike 1; Verbal warning, Strike 2; Confiscation of offending article, Strike 3; Class detention.

Being a pathological fidgeter I always considered this vastly unjust – however in lieu of many hanging 9am’s accompanied by this delightful sound, my fantasy strike system is beginning to look like this: Strike 1; Polite, written warning, Strike 1; Gentle verbal warning accompanied by short disciplinary hearing (Only a formality you understand) maybe tea and nibbles after, Strike 3; CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.

THE STRIDE – OF – PRIDER

Late. Loud. Victoriously touting clothes belonging to members of the opposite sex. (Boys, this worryingly does not exclude you…) We get it. You pulled. Bravo. Stop being so disgustingly energetic, you naughty obnoxious fresh!

It is one thing to sidle into your lecture hoping no-one notices you’re still dressed as a canary from an AU social and have tinsel hanging off places that they did not start out life attached to. It is another thing entirely to celebrate the fact to a room of individuals, who would rather be re-acquainting themselves with the 7 double vodka lemonades they drank the night before than know what you were up to last night.

SOBER BUT CHIPPY

Pipes up with a point (Usually near the end of Lecture) Didn’t think before they started making point. Flounder hopelessly for what seems like hours in an increasingly obscure manner, whilst rest of lecture theatre imagines increasingly  inventive ways of murdering offending student up. Lecturer somehow extracts some microscopic grain of intelligence from the speech and continues for another 20 minutes. Thanks mate, thanks a lot.