Disclaimer: This blog is written in light vein. I respect Dr.A immensely and will consider my life awesome if I am half the researcher he is!Thursday!!! Well, its the day I have class and that means I get to sleep in full public view with no shame at all.. and the fact that class is in about an hour n a half from now is the motivation behind writing the blog in the first place! My prof is one of the hotshots of UC.. Am gonna call him Dr.A. Well, he's a superduper researcher.. but this class is new and leaves a lot to be desired for, like INTEREST!
Well, I have taken 2 of Dr.A's classes before and though I have managed to unceremoniously doze off in 1-2 classes here and there, none have been this bad! And Dr.A owing to his nationality, cannot pronounce my name for the life of him! Well, I understand that actually. Jayalakshmi Parasuraman is a nightmare for all non-Indians... I can't even begin to tell you the number of permutations and weird sounds I've heard in connotation to my name! Indeed, in the first class I took with Dr.A, he was handing out our tests scores... And usually when an instructor scrutinizes a paper real hard, thats my cue.. The paper turns out to be mine most of the time. I was on the edge of my seat to spring up. TO my surprise, Dr.A emitted a sound that was like - Sleellivason Langolomon. I was bewildered and I turned to look at Ashwin to see that his expression mirrored mine. And to my amazement, Srini (Srinivasan Raghuraman) was advancing towards the desk to pick his paper!!! I couldn't help cackling! And I dreaded to think what my name churned out from that mouth would be.. And a few papers later - Jayalaxkimi Palsulamon. Not so bad! He asked me kindly - 'Was that correct?' And I said its - Jayal'aksh'mi. He smiled at me n said - 'ok Jayalaxkimi'. Lost case!
Coming back to present day classes, well, most of the time I find myself tuned out and not listening.. making a list of Manirathnam movies.. or writing down my favorite raagas.. Or worse.. shamelessly sleeping (I have mastered the art of sleeping with my eyes open - Ashwin disagrees!!) The other day I was staring at Dr.A with glazed eyes and he stared back for 5 seconds before I realized that he'd asked me a question. I tried to look my intelligent best and tried my best to recollect the question. And suddenly it came to me... He'd asked me -'Why are genomics relatively easier than proteomics?' I knew the answer, but I had pull it out from the depths of my sleep. I mumbled something like -'There are only 4 genes and there are many proteins' Thats like the most elementary answer in the world. Coming from a Masters student, it was plain dumb! And I realised what I shouldve said - There were 4 building blocks for genes n various amino acids. Dr.A was kind n actually took that for an answer. I deflated in my chair and went into slumber shortly, convinced that my answering for the whole quarter was done. How wrong I was! Another question!!! This time a better answer! Eeeks.. What was happening!
Tuesdays n Thursdays... No matter how hard I try to think of something.. anything that would keep my eyes open (more often than not I think of those Tom'n'Jerry techniques - painting eyes on the back of eyelids or using toothpicks to hold them open.. !!!), nothing works! Its that amazing daze that falls over you only disturbed by Ashwin sleeping next to me or scribbling notes... And its not even like I am sleep deprived or anything.. quite the contrary as a matter of fact! Hehe... I guess I missed all this when I had no courses... Thats why I take solace in this one! :)
11 comments:
I am sooo glad its not just me who does it all the time and I expect a lot of us to have gone through these "perfectly active before and after the class" somehow these classes suck all the adrenaline...and then what do you expect of the poor body... its merely a chemical reaction to absence of adrenaline...
anyhow, this reminds me of a dear friend who took this whole experience to the next level. HE would ofcourse sleep in the class (and this is India where Professors DO MIND if you doze off in their class) but when woken up by a neighboring friend he would get mad at him for doing so even if it were at the request of the teacher.....ha ha I still burst into laughter when I recall some of those incidents..
Haha... Yeah Dhwani, this class makes me my dreamiest best and those are the longest hour n half of the day!!! Whooosh!
25% of my grad courses were in the evenings and predominantly they were 3 hours long, now however motivated I was or however interesting the course was..limit was an hour and half..after that gods knows what happenned.
Your post reminded me of one of my profs who liked the challenge of calling out non-american names, suprisingly he was good at it.
btw what r u doing at UC? genes..sounds like biomed..
Hi Shankar,
Me in ECECS - MEMS. So, I have these bio-sounding courses... Hehe.. My profs are all bad.. Finally they decide to call me 'Jaya' n it turns out as 'Jshaya' with a biiiig accent... N always, I end up saying - J-as in jump, A-as in apple, Y-as in yes n A-as in apple! Grrrrrrrrrr
Hmm, poor Dr. A. I am sure Jayalakshmi Parasuraman is a night mare for him in all respects. Well, thats true not only for non-Indians but for some Indians like us also...;)
Well Sachin... The way u people cant pronounce south indian names amuses me.. But then again, its a known fact.. amongst Indians, the southies(read madras based well educated) have the best pronunciations!
Jaya, I was not talking about your name...but Jayalakshmi Parasuraman as the entire package...heeheehee.
Grr brr grr brr.. Knowing me, u know what that means!
@ Jaya:
Good post. I'm quite sure there would be several students who would have exactly identical or similar experiences to share.
Don't stop dreaming .. and don't stop at dreaming !
lol!!! i know exactly how it is!!! from all those too cold conference rooms back you-know-where and chi chi's deep sonorous voice..never quite listen to him ever i think.
Handy tip: If you really, truly want to wake up, you could try watching fellow dozers nodding off to sleep. Its funny and it wakes me up EVERY time :)
~Radhika
Will surely give it a thot, Rads!
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