For the last few years, I’ve always ended up getting horrible team mates in class. Whenever had a group project, I would inevitably get a really slacker team. Now, I admit I am not the most dedicated of students - however these people make me look like a rocket scientist. It has been a matter of great frustration to try and figure out why I get such horrible groups. Even when I went into a class advertising that I needed “motivated students looking for an A” for the group, I still ended up with slackers. It came to me a few weeks ago why I kept getting bad classmates.

In high school one of my teachers outlined the information she had gained about some of the psychology behind how people choose their seats in classes. The obvious being that the good students sat in the front row eager to be as close as possible. The bad students often sat on the outlying edges and towards the back. The intraverts who sat atop this motivation bell curve would cluster in the middle.

This isn’t strictly true. It’s true in many instances and is a good general principle but I, for example, am an exception. I would sit towards the front or in the middle, but due to my size and concerns of blocking the view of other students I sit on the outer edges usually towards the back. As such, I end up among the sea of the less motivated students.

So when it comes time to pick groups, unless the professor assigns groups, I end up with those around me who are not of the highest caliber.

And when I made my post to a class mailing list concerning that I was looking for motivated team members, what I ended up with was people seeing someone who was obviously driven for a good grade and so they could in theory use my motivation and leech off of my work in the class.

This is an untested theory as it only occurred to me during this semester and I haven’t had a chance to see if sitting in a more forward position would help me to gain a better group - we’ll see next semester.

On a related topic, one of the things which my teacher laid out for us, was the concept of power seats for nonverbal communication. The theory being that there are five main lines of sight for a teach or professor. Those are set off at basically 0°, 45°, 90°, 135°, and 180°. And if someone sits in those line of sight they are more likely to be called on as well as to be noticed by the teacher.

Inversely she gave an example where a class banded together, occupied those power seats, and trained a professor to be more interesting through the use of nonverbal communication. When he spoke energetically and was interesting they gave good body posture and projected interest by leaning in and remaining still. When he began reading from the book or fell into a monotone sort of voice the students leaned back and began to grow restless in their seats.

Whether the above story is true or not, I don’t know. But don’t doubt the power of good body language and nonverbal communication.

It hit me a few days ago: wanderlust. I’ve got the tug, I want to travel. I want to go somewhere I’ve never been. And I think it’s going to be Chicago.

• I want to see shows at iO and Second City.
• It’s a big city and I haven’t been to it.
• Airfare is pretty cheap with Orlando and Chicago both being hubs.

I’m excited. I’ve never really planned an open ended trip on my own. Stay tuned.

So I’m sitting here in the campus Student Service Building typing away on my laptop and rocking out on my iPod with Dragonforce’s guitar riffs. As I sit here a kid walks up to me so I pull out my iPod earbuds and without saying a word to me the kid hands me a piece of white paper, folded in half, turns and walks away.

I’m obviously slightly confused by this, so I open the sheet of paper and all it says is “(Sonnet here)” with an arrow pointing downwards. I’m curious but not overly so, I set the paper aside and resume working on my paper. But it bugs me, I don’t get it. So I pick the paper up again to look for any writing I may have missed. Nope, still short and confusing.

A few minutes pass and my cell phone buzzes. It’s my sister Jessica.

“Hey sis.”

“Hey Bro, you’re next to / near / somewhere around my friend Duncan.”

“Huh?”

“My friend recognized you.”

“Oh!” And it was at this point that it clicked. This was one of my sister’s weird friends.

She went on to explain that her friend thinks I look like Shakespeare with my pic on Facebook. So he dropped me this note and then texted my sister telling her that he gave me a note demanding that I write a sonnet or else he was going to kill her. Now that I understand what happened I have to give the kid props for creativity…

But it’s still a little weird. Funny though. My sister and I had a good laugh as we pieced the puzzle together.

April 1st is the day I shut off the Internet connection here. There is not a more frustrating and pointless day on the Internet. It’s become one of those things that all fashionable websites must include April Fools jokes. Sites I go to for factual information now have 2/3 bogus information and 1/3 quasi-factual information. So April 1st is the day when I disconnect from the Internet.

My family has never been big on practical jokes. Dad quashed any urge for them from us at a young age. I vividly remember being grounded for things I thought were minor pranks and yet huge in hilarity. So perhaps that is carrying over here some, I’m willing to admit the possibility of such.

Sex … the show is about sex … sex, sex, sex! Yes, we’re pandering to our audience, but not in the way you might be thinking.
(more…)