Fun Things to Do During a Boring Lecture
Published on Sat 11 September 1999
- Bring a blowhorn. Use it when you ask or answer a question.
- Heckle the professor.
- Hire a video crew to come to the class. If asked about it, say that you have to tape the lecture for a friend.
- Bring a water gun. Shoot the professor when his back is turned.
- Get the other students in your row to do the wave.
- Bring a small chalkboard to class. Ask the professor if you can borrow his chalk to take notes.
- Contradict everything the professor says. Offer irrefutable scientific proof.
- If it's a math lecture, claim that the professor misspelled pi.
- When the professor asks a question, raise your hand. If the professor calls on you, point to someone in the next row and say "He knows." Pick a different person each time.
- Buy a doll. When you go to class, leave the doll in your chair, along with your notebook and pen. Say that you have an important meeting to go to, and that the doll will be taking notes for you.
- Bring a typewriter. Use it to take notes.
- Write a love note. Sign it "a secret admirer". Get someone to pass it to the professor.
- Get up to go to the bathroom five or six times during the class. Change clothes every time.
- While taking notes, write vulgar words every few lines. If anyone asks, say you have Tourette's syndrome.
- Buy a watermelon. Give it to the professor. If he/she asks, say "They were out of apples."
- Bring a small tape player. Play a tape of the previous lecture. Take notes on both.
- If it's an English class, ask how the theory of relativity relates to Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream".
- Pretend to be asleep until five minutes before the end of class. Then wake up and explain that you missed the lecture, and ask the professor to summarize what he/she talked about.
- Bring a can of spray paint. Use it to take notes on the classroom wall.
- Bring a fully-stocked picnic basket to class. Explain that you didn't have time to eat breakfast.
- Wear a loincloth to class. If anyone asks, say that it is your costume for the school play, and you didn't have time to change out of it.
- Tear out pages of the textbook and make little origami animals out of them. Have a whole menagerie by the end of class. Give them to the professor as a token of your esteem.
- Bring a fishing rod. Try to catch things on the professor's desk.
- Bring a tape player and a tape of a thunderstorm. Keep it hidden. Sometime during the lecture, start the tape, stand up, claim that the professor has angered the gods and leave. Watch to see how many students follow you after the tape starts playing.
- Make reserved seating cards and place them on the desks before class.
- Tell the professor you are on a new experimental cold medication that may have strange side effects. Every ten minutes or so, run around the room screaming. Afterward, claim that you have no memory of what just happened.
- Claim that you are the new student teacher, and that you are to give the lecture for that class. If the professor agrees, lecture on a subject completely opposite the to subject of the class. If the professor objects, say that the students should have a wide range of knowledge.
- Switch the professor's lecture notes with your history notes from last term.
- Raise your hand and ask when the movie is going to start.
- Bring a flash camera. Take pictures every few minutes, using a very bright flash. If anyone complains, say that you didn't see any sign saying you couldn't bring cameras.
- Bring a light bulb. Hold it over your head whenever you have the answer to a question.
- Bring an easel and a paint set. Paint a portrait of the professor during the lecture. Say that it is a homework assignment for art class.
- Sneeze very loudly. Then, have the person next to you sneeze, then the person next to him, and so on. See how long it takes before the professor sneezes.
- When the professor comes in, say, very loudly, "Hey! A substitute! All right!" Claim that the real professor said you could have lecture outside.
- Come to class wearing the same outfit as the professor. Call the professor a copycat.
- If it's a geology lecture, switch the quartz crystals with New Folger's Crystals and see if the professor notices. Have a hidden camera.
- Hide a ticking clock under the podium. Call in a bomb threat.
- Write your assignment on Plato on your little sister's modeling clay.
- Ask questions in a foreign language you know the professor doesn't know. Act angry when he/she doesn't understand you.
- Come to class dressed as a professional wrestler. Tell people you joined the wrestling team. Bodyslam anyone who doesn't believe you.
- When the professor comes in, suddenly scream, "NOOOOOO! Not him! Not professor Johnson! They let him teach again! Noooooooooo!" then run out of them room. See how many people follow you.
- Turn your row into a mosh pit.
- Before class starts, turn all the desks upside down. Sit on them like you would normally.
- Two words: American Gladiators.
- Make requests like people do at rock concerts. ("Relativity! Relativity! Einstein rocks!")
- Bring popcorn. Throw it and the professor. Complain that these trained animal shows aren't what they used to be.
- Bring a tape player and a tape of the school bell. Play it every 15 minutes.
- When the professor calls on you, mumble inconprehensibly. Answer every question in this fashion. See how long it takes before the professor stops calling on you.
- When you take a test, hire a security guard to stand by your desk and make sure no one cheats off your paper.
- Make up a strange religious cult and distribute flyers for it during class.