January 30, 2013, by Sarah
A Bowl of Work
So lectures have started again. *Psycho music*
They’re really interesting, relevant to my course and all of that – but full days (6 hrs a day) on Monday and Tuesday are pretty intense.
Revising, exams, and Christmas holidays somehow make you forget what lectures are like and the natural phenomena occurred with them – so I think I shall outline here:
- Hanger. This is when the lecture is quite long – say over three hours- and you get so hungry you get angry and lose concentration
- The delayed toilet response. This is when you are in a long lecture, drinking (non alcoholic beverages – I’m not that much of a lad), making notes, living your life with no urge for the loo then you get back home and BOOM – have to run to relieve yourself. Why my body does this I do not know.
- Lecture-induced cognitive dissonance. This is when you are genuinely interested in a topic but due to tiredness/ hanger / life you can’t concentrate thus simultaneously feel interested and bored. This creates tension and conflict between these two states.
The finite capacity effect. Basically the more knowledge you try and cram in your brain, the harder it gets. Firstly it’s like pouring water in a glass then becomes more like pushing porridge through a sieve. A tiny brain shaped sieve that simply won’t accept the porridge of knowledge – even if it is high in intellectual fibre. 
- The doodlebug. Becoming completely distracted by meaningless doodling even if it something you would never normally do.
- The battle of the yawn. Expending energy suppressing yawning to not offend the lecturer – thus gritting teeth, vibrating cheeks and generally looking mental.
In other news I went bowling yesterday with the fungalow (the people who brought you the phrase FatLad Hench). I haven’t been since I was about 13 and I have always come last but it was a friends 21st so thought it would be a laugh. It was.
We went to the bowling place in Clifton as you can get there via the hopper bus and the system there was pretty much the Windows 95 of bowling. Our lane broke down 7 times. Sometimes you were bowling and there were still knocked-down pins from your previous go. Sometimes the light went off. Sometimes there weren’t all 10 pins to bowl for. It was rather amusing. Also I came fourth of 10 which was a bonus!
There was plenty of snooker
Here we have imaginative bowling names
Here are the beautiful bowling shoes (!!!) which I’d forgotten how fun they are to wear
And then – I wouldn’t recommend this – two people fitting in a small car boot:
As one of them said afterwards “well on the plus side now I can’t have kids.”
They’re also now in a boyband:
So that was a fun evening out.
Now I have plenty of work, I am signing the contract for my house next year and I am going out for a meal with my church tonight so I will love you and leave you. Have I missed any lecture phenomena? Let me know!
You’ve just invented my new favourite phrase: “the porridge of knowledge”. I’m going to try and use it in a sentence this week. Or I may just tweet it.