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Thursday, February 11, 2010

The BackBench Effect



We all know the difference between the people who always sit in the front benches in classes and people who all sit at the back benches. There is a humorous term called "The BackBenchers Effect" which is characterized by drooping eyelids,physical presence by mental absence, reading novels hidden within larger books,proxy,talking incessantly and making fun of the professor to name a few.
I myself have been a front bencher all my life and I never imagined what being a backbencher would be like. Had I known before how good it would be, I would have started earlier. This is what I think about being a backbencher...

Prologue:
So am in my final year at the university, I have managed to secure a job and my marks are good enough. It so happens that all the subjects that we have to attend in the final semester are very mundane and if not so are made so by the very talented dumb professor who think the best way to teach is to dictate. This combined with my desire to do as I please in class (desires included reading novels or books that are more interesting that the prof talk, talking and playing silent games) made me move from my usual front seat to the ones at the back.

Experience:
I am a person who always takes everything with a grain of salt and I didn't think the "backbench atmosphere" would be conducive to me. However I decided the take the lesser of the 2 evils and sat back.
The class soon began to fill and the front benchers gave me a curious eye asking " What are you doing back there?" I just smiled. I just realized that from my vantage point i could see everything that went on in the class, people exchanging notes, people msgs on mobiles, people sleeping, people talking etc was all in front of my eyes. Had I been sitting in the front bench I would never had seen all that.
I was also shielded from the view of the prof and could do as I want which was the entire point anyway. Also the prof deplorable speech couldn't be heard because of all the talking going on around me. This suited my fine and I immersed myself in learning stuff that I was interested in. The only thing that I had to take care was to be awake when the rollcall was done. lol. But that too wasn't a problem because the friendly people near me would nudge me if I slept off :)

Another thing that struck me was the Bohemian attitude of the people. The phrase " All iz Well" seemed to be the mantra. People were really laid back about taking notes, listening to the professor for his/her experience, taking down homework, assignments etc, shouting for class to end as soon as the seconds hand went overtime,
discussing new techniques in coding or exchanging ideas on great topic, in short these people were not what I once imagined them to be like.

I rather enjoyed my experience as a backbencher and I think we can say that I too am afflicted with it now. Every class that I think I can bunk is now attended but now sitting at the back benchers.

I didnt think I would say this but "BACKBENCHERS RULE!!!"