Lectures: Who to Expect

The original draft, produced for 'Fireball Whisky'. I'd like to reiterate this was written in an attempt to appeal to the target audience. It is not a reflection of my attitude towards university, or my opinion of students. 

http://www.ignitethenite.co.uk/who-to-look-out-for-in-lectures/

Who to Look Out For In Lectures

In all walks of life you will come across certain stereotypical individuals of whom you are simply powerless to avoid. That annoying phone salesman who is adamant they’re “not trying to sell you anything, but…”; The power-hungry busybody who has the rather simple intention of causing as much unnecessary hassle as possible – yes, traffic wardens, and train ticket inspectors, I’m very specifically looking at you; The edgy indie-kid who outright refuses to enjoy music once it passes the ‘mainstream’ threshold; That policeman who turns up at your door, day after day, and just will not give you a break no matter their lack of evidence against you… Oh, that’s just me then? Never mind, moving swiftly on…

No matter where you go or what you study, lectures will contain their own standard sets of personnel. Rest assured, take a look around your lecture hall you’ll find certain characters adequately fitting the following descriptions. Prospective students – get familiarising yourself with the following student pool-of-variety that you can expect to come across from September onwards; current students or graduates – get categorizing!

The Smart Arse: Arguably the worst of the lot, ‘the smart arse’ is annoying for multiple reasons. The first, frankly, is that they ARE smarter than you, no matter how much you refuse to admit it. The second – they WILL let you know about it. If the lecturer asks a question, they will ensure not only that they answer the question, but include any additional information that is likely to impress the seemingly inferior crowd. There is one thing these lecture-room inhabitants fail to understand, though – that nobody is actually impressed. For example, if at the beginning of a ‘European Politics’ module the lecturer asks “who before this course can already name all 27-members of the European Union?”, don’t put your hand up and proceed to reel them off. As one fellow student of mine found out all too well, nobody is impressed until you get one wrong – which subsequently leads to an almighty cheer. Yes, pal, you know who you are, and you asked for it.

Mr and Mrs Posh: No, I’m not referring to the couple who think they’re David and Victoria, or any Peterborough United fans for that matter. These two are most likely to be found lurking in your seminars or tutor groups, waiting for the perfect opportunity to turn the simplest of points into an apparent scientific breakthrough. Lacking any real academic ability above the regular students, these will use their dignified accent to appear superior to the mere peasants that surround them. Instead of making things easily understandable for the greater good, these types are experts in the art of fraud. When they finish discussing a straightforward interpretation of an Oscar Wilde remark – you’ll be left believing they deserve a Nobel Prize for an outstanding contribution to literature. Don’t be fooled. They learnt that point at GCSE level.

The Sleeper: Far less irritating, the sleeper is rather self-explanatory. They will fall asleep, anywhere, anyhow, at any time. Sleepers hold no consideration for the lecturer attempting to aid them in their quest to earn a degree – something with which the sleeper does themselves no favours. Sometimes, the sleeper will turn up in their pyjamas, pre-prepared, already accepting the inevitable nap that will occur.

The Front-Row Fanatic: With each and every lecture, the same familiar individuals will occupy the front-row of the hall. With some cases, these will simply be unfortunate folk who must sit that close for eyesight purposes. In all others, however, these are simply educational extremists, minimising the opportunity for interruption to their concentration. In ensuring they do not miss a single snippet of information that could be useful for the forthcoming exams, these students do no harm to anyone. Keeping quiet and getting on with their work, front-row fanatics are something to be admired. They annoy nobody, they belittle nobody, and they interrupt nobody. If you find yourself as a front-row fanatic – good on you! Keep up the good work, just maybe buy yourself a pint, or a Fireball, now and again…

The Gamer: The gamer uses entertainment to provide others, well, entertainment! Lecture gamers get up to all sorts of fun distractions during lectures. I’ve seen everything from thorough in-depth football tactics masterminded on a writing pad, to sublime pieces of work produced on Microsoft Paint. In some more selfish instances, the gamer will resort to the likes of ‘angry birds’ on their smart phone, which is no fun to the rest of us. You can complain that gamers are unwanted and unavoidable distractions, but there’s nothing stopping you becoming a front-row fanatic – gamers can’t get to you there.

The Late-Act: You will probably give your own name to this categorization, depending on the person or persons that fall under the heading. 10 minutes into your lecture, somebody will crash through the back-entrance impersonating a wet-dog as they shake the water out of their hair from the shower they just got out of. They will always sit at the back, and have been too rushed to have remembered the correct books, or a pen. Late-acts commonly turn into ‘sleepers’ as they soon realise the lecture has become a pointless part of an otherwise… well, extremely pointless day. They will also be the first ones found frantically packing up there stuff at the first sign that the end-of-the-lecture is near. Last in, first out, every time.

And, finally, “My iPad is better than your… writing pad”: This category consists of two people, and an overall large proportion of the lecture hall population. First, there is the people sat jealously watching the person next to them taking notes on their high-tech tablet; Secondly, there’s the people using the high-tech tablet. It is human nature to want something that somebody else has got, so here’s your warning – get yourself an iPad if you have the chance, or regret it following three years of written note-taking.

You Twit. Six-of-the-Best Comic Accounts

Twitter is an annoyingly quite brilliant concept. I don’t want to feel the need to care about what ‘celebs’ are up to, I don’t want to have conversations or try to explain something with an impossible limit of 140 characters, and I certainly don’t want to be reminded that whilst only 186 people care about what I have to say (half of which are fake porn stars or business accounts looking for my custom, so therefore don’t count), over three million take an interest in Piers Morgan’s pearls of wisdom, and almost 2 million users want to know who Joey Barton is next looking to stab in the eye with a cigarette!

Even so, somehow, Twitter keeps dragging me and the rest of the unimportant nation in. The interactivity with the rich and famous is an ideal much admired by the ‘Beliebers’ and ‘Directioners’ of the twittosphere, as they continue to genuinely believe that Justin actually gives a **** that ‘Justin means the world to us!’… Oh shut up, you delusional psychopaths, he doesn’t even know you exist.

Outbursts aside, one of the best elements existing with twitter is the ‘are they, aren’t they?’ fake accounts that you can plausibly believe, yet are almost too clever to be real. The one’s that make you laugh through over-excessive stereotyping or parodying of reality. Here’s some of my favourites that you simply have to take a look at. Now I apologize in advance, for ALL of these will be football-related and thus some will have no interest at all in my ‘six of the best’ below. For the rest of you, you might want to make some additions to your ‘following’ list.

NCFC CHAOS CREW (@CHAOSCREW_NCFC): Described in impressively illiterate fashion as ‘an up and coming mob of lads’, this “numba 1 yoof firm” likes to dress in ‘smart casual clobber’, stay confidential for obvious reasons (‘old bill’), only ‘smash up’ casuals not ‘shirters’, and enjoy helping out with their granddads allotments in their spare time. Behind the hard-man image the Norfolk boys actually offer some insightful, analytical comments on topics such as ‘nawty’ players at Newcastle, or the exceedingly poor quality of beer such as Fosters. Don’t appear to be ‘old bill’ though, or you’re ‘blocked son’ for ‘mugging them off’! Far too good to be true, the people behind the profile go down as comedy geniuses in my book.

Wale Hezekiah (@WaleLuvzGirl): Wale is, supposedly, a proud Christian from Nigeria who holds three clubs close to his heart – Liverpool, Man United and Celtic. His love for Liverpool is epitomized by his obsession with superstar Stewart Downing, and Celtic through his appreciation of manager ‘Aaron’ Lennon. His Manchester United team include Ruud Van Pursie, John o Shay, and Nanny, though he strongly advocates the sacking of Alex Ferguson – particularly disagreeing with the signing of a player who ‘thinks he is a pokemon’, meaning Javier Hernandez. Displaying his feelings through what is atrociously bad written grammar, Wale is partial to some ‘*dancin*’, enjoys sending ‘*hugz*’, whilst also proving an emotional character as he often breaks down ‘*cryin*’ or puts on his ‘*sad face*’. An admired tweeter amongst his followers, Wale is, quite frankly, brilliant.

Cockney Fred the Red (@notagloryhunter): As stereotypical as they come, Fred’s purpose is to mimic 50% of the football-‘supporting’ nation in his love of Manchester United Football Club for absolutely no reason whatsoever. He claims to have once visited Old Trafford – as an Arsenal fan – but has bought the United shirt for the last 5 years so is supposedly worthy of his ‘Avid MUFC Fan’ tag. He is keen to show the world what being a ‘proper red’ is all about – singing about ‘CR7’, being happy with Anderson as opposed to Lucas Moura, and celebrating their ‘champions’ status last season… for 122 seconds. Now, this account won’t go down well with many – for example, if you’re a United fan because your granddad once went to Manchester and said it was nice, steer well clear. If you’re a Manchester City fan, or any other genuine football supporter for that matter (United fans included), you’re free to laugh at the expense of all ‘plastics’.

Canary Call (@01603617321): For all you Norfolk-born-and-bred folk, Canary Call needs no introduction. For those of you without such a privilege, Canary Call is the football phone-in on Radio Norfolk which follows all NCFC games and features some of Norfolk’s finest mentalists. Norfolk accents at their very best, accompanied by football knowledge at its very worst, the comedy value of Canary Call is not to be underestimated. The twitter account (getting back to the point) is effectively a parody of the kind of calls the radio station can expect to receive – yet, worryingly, it’s really not far off. Consistently wondering ‘WAS GORN ON?!’, wanting ‘Hootun out’, and ‘Foomun’ about a lack of ‘ghouls’ – this account is the closest you’ll get to the real-thing outside of Norfolk. Come on, everybody loves a laugh at our expense, so here’s some armoury delivered on a plate.

Alan Shearer’s Eyes (@HowAlanSeesIt): As many regular Match-of-the-Day viewers can testify – Alan Shearer was a far better player than he is now a pundit. Popping up during the Blackburn, Newcastle and England hero’s finest hours of punditry, this account aims to put some perspective on the points that Alan raises, and highlight the simplicity of his analysis. According to the Alan Shearer that this account portrays, ‘Defenders don’t like strikers who try to score goals’… just to give you an idea of the tone of these tweets. What’s even funnier about this account is when the occasional imbecile responds to a tweet believing it’s genuine. Just last week, somebody argued Alan should ‘get real’ and it was ‘about time he quit’ following a sarcastic analysis of a booking… There’s just no helping some people, honestly.

Opta Parody (@OptaParody): Quite self-explanatory, this is a parody of the statistics provided by the legitimate ‘Opta’ sports account. As opposed to providing interesting, useful and, well, truthful statistics – Opta Parody prefers to present jokes with the purpose of mocking anyone and anything in the world of football. Here are a few samples, just so you get the idea – ‘0 – The number of clues this referee has. Embarrassing’; ‘2020 – The earliest Arsenal will next win a trophy. Rubbish’; £1,856,348 – The yearly saving in hospital bills QPR will make after they release Kieron Dyer from his contract. Sick-note’… I’m sure you get it by now.