Bored in class?

Sitting in a large lecture hall on a particularly lazy day, I looked around and noticed that more than half the class had a laptop with multiple screens opened, busily typing away. People were talking on AIM, playing Party Poker, or ?poking? people on Facebook ? that is, until I noticed something unusual.

The act itself was not unusual, but the situation as a whole was so unutterably extraordinary that I couldn?t believe my eyes. Directly seated in front of me was a student who was browsing through porn on his computer. Yes. Porn. Of all the activities to be engaging in, in public, watching porn was the last thing that I expected to witness.

We all have days when paying attention in class is not a priority. Sleep, poker, tic-tac-toe, and instant messaging sometimes just are infinitely more appealing. So what happens when we find ourselves stuck in a class with nothing to distract us? We need to let our muse kick in and come up with our own list of attention-grabbing useless things to do.

1. Count how many times the professor uses ?uh,? ?umm,? or ?like? during an entire lecture.

2. Try to hold your breath for as long as you can without passing out. Time yourself. Record your time. Repeat.

3. Do aerobic exercises in your head so that by the end of the day, you can think to yourself how ?athletic? you were today.

4. Write a play about an angry lobster, a happy penguin, and an evil genius.

5. Plug your ears and try to see if you can lip-read what the professor is saying.

6. Look at all the dots in the ceiling and try to find your favorite cartoon character.

7. Arm wrestle/play thumb war with yourself and accuse your right arm/left thumb of cheating.

8. Come up with a list of all the words you can make out of the letters in ?smorgasbord.?

9. Say a word silently to yourself (e.g. ?broccoli?) so many times that it loses meaning. Then try to remember what it meant in the first place.

10. Draw a flipbook at the bottom right corner of your notebook.

11. Keep your eyes open without blinking for as long as you can.

12. Re-enact or make up your very own 50-minute silent movie.

13. Look out the window and try to find cool-looking clouds that look like they came straight out of a Disney animated movie.

14. Start knitting yourself a scarf for the cold winter ahead.

15. Play cat?s cradle with the cute boy or girl sitting next to you. Who knows, you might get lucky and score a screen name.

16. Fold paper cranes so you?ll have a hefty collection by the end of the semester.

17. Switch seats in a clandestine manner every time the professor turns to face the blackboard. Count how many times you can do this without getting caught.

18. Stare at someone until they turn around. Then keep staring and give them a maniacal smile. Be sure your eyes are open real wide to enhance the effect.

19. Try not to fall asleep.

20. Pretend you?re a tree.

If none of these things appeal to you, you might as well do homework during class. At least you?ll be somewhat productive!