So it’s Friday and you’re smack in the middle of your third and final class of the day. As you reach the 40 minute plateau, it becomes increasingly clear that it may be time to resort to more drastic measures in order to help fight the blanket of exhaustion that has begun to overcome you. A couple of semesters back, I found myself facing this unfortunate scenario on a weekly basis, and I can remember one particular Friday where it was especially excruciating and unbearable.
There was that Full Throttle in my bag – it would give me a quick rush that would help me finish out the day – but, alas, I had been caffeine-free for a week with no intention of relapsing. Writing notes in order to help me stay awake was no longer a viable option either, because every time I started to take these notes, I’d end up dozing off within a minute and dropping my pencil on the floor. After the third time the teacher picked up my pencil and handed it back to me, it dawned on me that my plan to sit in the front row in order to get full class participation had backfired.
In high school, I somehow was always able to avoid this undesirable situation because of the various shenanigans that my classmates would constantly pull. Among the funnier ones was when one student programmed his palm pilot to serve as a universal television remote control and would freak the teachers out by turning on the TV at various times during the class. There was also the schmuck who would use his watch to deflect sunlight into the teacher’s eyes.
Nothing, however, could match the hilarity and amusement of my ninth grade English class. The teacher of that class was named Mr. Baiden, and, not surprisingly, the students quickly took to calling him “Master.” That designation stopped rather abruptly when, one day in the middle of class, a classmate of mine announced, “Without a Mrs. Baiden, there must be a whole lot of Master Baiden.”
But throughout all of my years of high school, it was never me who was able to pull the trigger on these pranks; I was simply an unwitting witness. As a college student, I feel even less inclined to mock my teachers for personal amusement, given that UR is footing my entire tuition next year for Take Five. With this in mind, I realized one day in class that I’d have to formulate a plan B for how to entertain myself for the next half hour or so.
It was just then that I remembered that in 11th grade, I’d leave my physics class for roughly 30-minute intervals in order to lift weights in my school weight room. Well, I had exactly 30 minutes to kill and my school had a weight room – it seemed as though fate had intervened on my behalf.
Immediately, I raised my hand, and when called upon by the professor, I blurted out “I have an extremely important meeting that I completely forgot about and I have to go!” Without waiting for a reply, I jumped out of my seat and rushed out the door while yelling, “Thanks for understanding!”
As soon as I got to the gym, my initial thought was to pump some iron, but with the weight area as overcrowded as a Star Trek Convention featuring George Takei (or Sulu for the ignorant among us), I decided to haul my caboose upstairs to the cardio area.
Of course, every cardio machine was occupied and the majority of people using these machines looked as though they hadn’t even broken a sweat yet. I approached one woman whose timer indicated that she had been on the machine for close to an hour. As unobtrusively as possible, I tapped her on the shoulder and politely said, “I think that there is a 30 minute time limit on cardio machines.”
Without acknowledging me, she hit the “stop” button on her machine and then immediately afterwards hit the “Quick-Start” button. She then turned to me and with a condescending tone said, “I know there’s a time limit but I just got on this machine. Maybe you should make your inferences to someone who is pathetic enough to listen.”
Finally, 30 minutes later, a machine opened up. After putting my towel on the machine, I ran to the water fountain to fill up my water bottle. Turning back from the water fountain, I was shocked to see that the machine that I had just reserved had been stolen away by the professor whose class I had left.
“Andrew,” he began, “it turns out that I have an extremely important meeting to get to so I assumed you wouldn’t mind if I jumped ahead of you.” Without waiting for a reply he looked at me with a smirk and added, “Thanks for understanding.”
Schwartz is a member of the class of 2008.
