Slumber Slayers

Some professors make you believe in magic. Every word they utter sounds like a sleeping curse. You keep trying to fight that overwhelming urge to sleep. If you fail, you’re promptly kicked out of the class. This blog is an account of the brave souls who fight off these spells for as long as three hours at a time, without a splash of water or a trace of fresh air. This blog is a tutorial and an inspiration for the others.


Seven Things People Do to Stay Awake in a Lecture

1. Write frantically: Keep pushing that pen without a pause. Use the pen like it’s a lifeline keeping you alive. Write everything on the board, the projector and every syllable the faculty speaks. Here is an excerpt from my notes in a lecture. ( ..This determines the need for HR policies...now....can anyone tell me how the awareness of these is important? Anyone? You there? Can you answer? I’m talking to you....stop writing and answer me you idiot!)


2. Resort to art: People start sketching subconsciously in their notebooks. Women end up decorating their alphabets with twisty, curly tails, drawing sketches of leaves and veiled village girls. Guys usually draw living beings out of basic geometric shapes (two circles for eyes, triangle for a nose and circles and rectangles for a variety of other human body parts) the more artistic ones draw Wagon-Rs that look like bat-mobiles and Mickey Mouse flying an F-16 with a cockpit smaller than his head.


3. Eye jack: People strain very hard to keep their eyes open and in the process end up looking super interested. If you’re a teacher and if your class has their eyes popping out, you’ve either had a wardrobe malfunction or you’ve just bored them into a coma.


4. Survival games: Try to hold your breath till your teacher utters 50 words. If your face turns red and sweaty, you may even be excused from the class. Count your yawns per minute (My record is 5) count your friends’ yawns per minute. Count the number of yawns you can squeeze in between your friend’s yawns.


5. Manual goading: Do the following in the ascending order of desperation. Rub your eyes, break your knuckles, stretch your back, scratch the back of your head, drill your nostrils, pinch your cheeks, bite your thumbs, slap yourself hard on the cheek, slam your head against the desk, stab your pen into your thigh, choke yourself.


6. Bend Physical Rules: Go quantum mechanical. Try and bend time and space. Tilt your head at weird angles to see new dimensions and planes. Keep trying to fold time and space and glance at the watch every three seconds to see if has clocked an extra second. Experience Doppler Effect (periodic intensification and numbing of sound) in spite of the source and the listener both remaining stationary. If your teacher is really good, you’ll even be able to see subatomic particles being flushed out of your brain and flowing out of the window.


7. Write a blog about staying awake in class.