You Have Now Entered...La Zone

          Sitting in class is such a tedious task sometimes.  I mean  really. How often have you sat in class and the prof is talking, talking, talking, pointing once and a while to a power point on the board...and then all of a sudden you wake up. Whether or not you were actually asleep is besides the point, you were definitely 'out' for an unknown length of time. Sometimes you check the clock or your computer to try and make an estimate of how long you were out for, but then realize you have no idea when you slipped into the unconscious to begin with.

          Today I was favoring the escape (spelled just like "escape") method of the day dream. Day dreaming, I find, can be the most effective way to zone out. It definitely has more pluses than outright sleeping and is more effective in its camouflage during class. You are able to stare straight at the prof or powere point and not be too obvious that your mind is no where near the topic of the Spanish Inquisition, lab rat test trials, or great British literary writers of the 20th century.

          Now I know that some of you are simply horrified that I sometimes...multi-task in iclass. Fear not, I always get notes taken and depending on the class, there might be a chance that I have recorded the lecture.

         Some of my best work has occurred while daydreaming. And by work I mean artwork or observational musings. Let me tell you what I mean. In my Humanities course during lecture one day last year I sketched figures/caricatures of the profs who were speaking and captioned them to fit their personality. I was really happy with my work until I remembered that the journal in which I drew these guys was in a journal I had to turn in to my section prof in the class...and he knew all the others profs. Luckily when the time came to hand it in, he didn't really care or comment on them. I also get distracted in art lectures for that course. I see the pieces we're studying and I start drawing my own version of them. Sometimes they turn out great, other times...not so much.

          Other than artwork and little scribbles and sketches I think it's fun to pay attention to the prof themselves. Haha that sounded like "DUH!" But here's what I mean: you're listening to the lecture or watching the power point right but every once and a while you notice this thing that your prof does with his/her hands or an inflection in their voice...and then moments later you notice the same thing again, and again. And the from then on you're counting the number of times they touch the projector screen to point something out or the number of times they ask, "Are you guys getting this?".

          I'm not really going anywhere prophetic with this or coming to an all encompassing earth-shattering conclusion, just that taking small breaks from the present each day can be very informative and can give you very much needed breathers. Not to mention you get to visit your childhood and play make-believe for a few minutes while everyone else toils over Emerson and confounding factors in an experiment.

One man's daydreaming is another man's novel.  ~Grey Livingston

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.  ~Steven Wright

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.   ~Neil Gaiman

Thanks for reading!