Notes of a Bored Young Man


KILL METhe first note comes about ten minutes into a ninety minute class.

Kill me.

I have always loved Z, the note’s writer, and killing her in this situation would be a true symbol of that love. I do not comply. I do, however, write back.

Let’s report him to Amnesty International for breaching the UN Convention against Torture.

As it’s a class on the European Union’s global role, this joke is esoteric and mean-spirited applied learning. The professor’s approach to teaching is to tell us everything he has ever learned in his whole life. Ever. Clearly an autonomist, he then allows us to sift through all the information he has ever attained to find the material and information relevant to this course. It’s methodologically ingenious.

Z: International Organizations was a Britney spears concert compared to this class.

I thankfully can not verify the validity of this statement, but I do agree with the sentiment. As if the gargantuan abundance of information is not enough, he parlays it with slides of 600+ words in 20+ bullet pointed paragraphs. He also brings his own creative brand of English.

“Can you say me what is the problem? Yes, it is unpossible to do this.”

I write: Unpossible?

From the front of the room: “When we have too many informations it is easy to be nondecisive.”

Z: Oops, he did it again!

Me: This class is unsanely boring.

Our giggles are muffled in fists. And then, almost at the same moment, it dawns on both of us what is happening in that back row: we have regressed.

We have become children.

Z is a 26-year-old media consultant. She is sharp, intelligent and, though fun and playful, a serious student. While my maturity is perennially in question, I am a 37-year-old university teacher who has gone at least a year without biting my finger whilst eating French fries. I am also a nerd and in accordance with the Universal Nerd Coalition I am bound to respect knowledge in all its forms and from all its sources.

That is, unless the sources are Fox News, Rush Limbaugh or soporific teachers who bend the rules of grammar like licorice tramps.

While I am disturbed to have lost 25 years off my age in ten minutes, I suppose that my immature coping technique for an unpleasant class is appropriate. It’s the only reaction I have in my memory banks to deal with a bad teacher. When in boredom, entertain yourself. This is the motto that caused dozens of ruler-wielding nuns to smack my ass and hundreds of black board erasers to find my forehead. But it also started me on the path of day dreaming, being creative and writing.

At the moment, anyway, Z and I don’t mind. Our game is staving off unsanity. We are a few minutes away from writing a MASH note and maybe after class we’ll jump rope or play hopscotch.

If I’m really lucky, maybe we’ll end sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

  1. #1 by Andy on April 19, 2012 - 4:04 pm

    D, I’m pretty sure you float pretty seamlessly between your various internal ages. One minute you’re giggling in the back row of a university classroom, the next you might be complaining about the obnoxious young whippersnappers playing their dang ‘ole music too loud on the tram. Both of which are fun watch you observe.

    Of course, if you ever start considering black socks to be appropriate with sandals, we’re staging an intervention.

Comments are closed.