Stuck In An Organisational Psychology Lecture

The following was written in a state of agonising desperation and severe suffering.

I am currently holed up in IV LT2. I am supposed to be here for an organisational psychology lecture but all I hear are an old lady’s stories about her amateur driver and international conferences in Taiwan. I suppose that didn’t make much sense to you, the net-surfer who happens to look by some blogs occasionally. You can then imagine how much sense that makes to the student who has woken up at 7:50 am, skipped breakfast, pushed his way through the line to get the bus and finally made it to a pressure cooker of a classroom (the ventilation here, just in case you are lucky enough to have never stepped into a LT before) panting and sweating. Let’s keep that aside…..once again, I’m in some antiquated lecture theatre (more like the first thing that springs to mind when you hear ‘creaking infrastructure’ and ‘heat chamber’ together), the time is 8:34 am and I’m wondering what is it in the mind of this old lady in front of us that makes her ceaselessly go on, looping her sentences in a way that seems to never end, disregarding that half the first bench has fallen asleep, and utterly, almost criminally forgetting how fuming she would leave a class of over sixty after ending up having said the same thing over and over again.

So much for the context, I’d love to put in an excerpt or two from what was going on but that would require me hearing it, and that’s out of the question. I will try dwelling on what I’ve done and what can be done during such a lecture other than writing about such things. It must be noted here that most of the usual lecture pastimes (sleep, mobile games etc.) do not work in such an environment. The mind is too agitated at the gross injustice of it all to stay idle as in sleeping or to focus as in gaming. So, just a couple of minutes ago, I tried keeping a track of where are her arguments going. Not as the note-making, head-nodding ubiquitous geek but as the detached but observant armchair spectator. The chart I came up with looks lke this

motivation at workplace->75% attendence rule->course registration nitty grtties->story of how Dean once intervened in some registration affair->modernplace computerisation and how it makes life difficult for oldies like her->story of how one student’s father once complained against some registration issue->how students take her for granted->how her new driver takes her for granted->rant on ‘over registration’ (no clue)->and then all of a sudden, assignment details (a quantum leap if you ask me).

All this in ten minutes. Hard to digest, but true. After this I tried playing tic-tac-toe, but as explained earlier, conventional methods dont work that smoothly. So out came a notebook and pen and here I am now. As I write, some cronies have suddenly stood up. The teacher finally flings her purse round her arm, giving some parting one-liners. The class is over. People start walking out, and I sit here, wondering how to end this.