Bad Student

I am a bad student. I used to be a good student, but my last year of Education changed that. I had quite a lot of contact hours in an extremely boring subject that had the unfortunate combination of redundant information and a delivery by a lecturer with no inflection.

The man spent hours telling me information I already knew (and found boring in the first place) in a voice that never once deviated from "sleep inducing drone".

In order to avoid gouging out my own eyes with my pencil, I learnt to distract myself from the extreme boredom by drawing comics on the back of my notes and writing myself little stories in class. I would zone in every now and then to check to see if he was saying anything new, then comfortably go back to my fantasy world.

Ever since then I've had great difficulty focusing in classes - especially if the teacher is talking about something I already have a handle on. Previously, I would wait patiently, nod politely and answer a few questions (or ask some) to make them feel like they had a responsive audience. Now I have a tendency to start planning a novel (which will never be written), draw designs for inventions (which will never be made) or leaf through whatever book I happen to have with me (which may or may not be for that subject).

It's worse now that I study online. For my Estonian classes, it's a different kettle of fish because it's just me and my tutor, and you can't zone out someone when they are talking specifically to you. The German classes, on the other hand, are shocking. It's completely audio/text, so I have a tendency to do all sorts of things instead of paying attention to the class, and just scan the process of the lesson occasionally so I can leap into action when someone mentions my name.

And as for the face-to-face classes I have? Let's just say I am no longer a responsive audience - especially if I happen to have the iPod on me and can check my emails.

Bad habits can be so very easy to form, can't they?