#3: Seating Plans

When I was in the first grade, my teacher sat us according to hair color. Not only did this inevitably result in a kind of eerie, optical-illusion-retrograde-racism-junior-style segregation, but it made me extremely self-conscious of where I was in relation to the teacher. If I were blonde, I'd be closer to her. If my hair were darker, I'd be even farther to the back. My proximity to the source of all worldly knowledge was based on a genetic lottery outcome, and just because I wasn't an aardvark didn't mean it was okay for me to not meet Arthur in real life.



Oh, and also it wasn't fair that my teacher made me sit far away.

However, having graduated from the murky area of assigned seats in lurid plastic chairs, I thought I was done with the arbitrary seating plan. I thought I would never have to curse the demonic impulse that made my teacher sit me behind the kid with the 'fro. But sadly, it seems I was mistaken. Because here at college, the seating plan is not only a classroom construct. The seating plan is life--except without sex or booze or fun or anything people enjoy.

Some professors use the plan to remember people's names. Some employ it primarily as a demonstrative gesture: it asserts their power to subject you to random whims and not give you any choice in who you sit next to or what they smell like. But most of them don't actually hand out the seating plan. They just wait until everyone sits down, then never let you move from that spot again. This is actually worse than being designated a sucky spot. This way, if you end up next to the kid who never outgrew the paste-eating habit, or who can't concentrate without muttering L'il Wayne lyrics under their breath, it's your own fault. That first day, when you made that split-second decision to sit where you sat? Yeah, that could have gone better. Nice going, now you'll smell like adhesive for a semester or so.

And the worst thing about the self-generated seating plan is getting a seat where the professor is physically unable to detect your presence visually. They can't see you no matter what you do or how hard you pray. Therefore, in order to be called on or speak with permission, you have to grunt and wave your hands above your head and snap your fingers like you don't realize you're doing it, but really you do. You could also have a seizure, I suppose, but having the ambulance service called to class tends to distract from the excellent point you were going to make about Oedipus' tragic flaw.

Here's the point about seating plans: if you ever have a choice, use those few seconds of freedom to find the kid who a) smells like cookies or b) looks really really tired. If a), they'll probably share whatever their delicious snack is with you, so it's worth a bad teacher-vantage point. If b), their sleeping in class will make you look awesome by comparison, no matter how dumb you actually are. And then, baby, it's a one-way trip to Undeserved-Passing-Grade City.