Can we get back in the classroom or nah?
By Matthew Fraser, Opinions Editor
My consciousness floats somewhere between wakeful boredom and whatever dream I was in the night before. Iâll lay here, conscious of the impending alarm notes but uncaring; the sun shines on to the foot of my bed and the ambience paints the inside of my eyelids. It could be 10 minutes, or it might be three hours, but Iâm not moving.
The sound âBach Cello Suite No.1 Preludeâ wafts from my phone speaker and calls me to turn it off; I drag the plastic contraption into bed with me like my body heat would console it. Doesnât happen, 10:05 am hits and it starts again. Out of bed, naked and cold, across the short floor that divides my studio apartmentâI turn on the kettle. The joys of living alone. Now that the âRona has us all on lockdown, every day is a school day. The first week of shutdown saw me do nothing followed by nothing at all. The second week saw the dawning of my responsibilities and nowâGod alone knowing what day it isâI have shit to catch up on.
Pants (no underwear because commando is for freedomâs sake), housecoat over my bare chest, and I sit down with my tea for an absorbing day in front of my computer shoving PowerPoint slides into my central processing apparatus. Some slides about fiscal policy sit in front of me, rendered by a 1080p screen. The self-study online textbook could bore me to death if the pain in my spine from sitting too long didnât cause me to twitch.
Itâs linguistics now and I would consider fighting someone to hear the drone of a human voice over the even silence of a computer screen. The mind wanders and fixates on the endless abyss of meme recollection. Black screen; itâs been at least four minutes and the screensaver has leapt into action. I think I was absorbed by the swirl of a long-lost paint stroke during the creation of my white walls. My green tea is probably getting cold, my keyboard and mouse batteries are probably going to die from being left on for so long, and Iâm sure that if a power outage struck right now, it would probably (albeit inadvertently) help my education.
I have endless envy for the people who can self-study their way to a degree. What type of self-motivated monster can crush PowerPoints and dry policy descriptions so ravenously as to be awarded a degree at the end? Teachers should thank people like me for preventing their job obsolescence. If 16-year-old me could see today’s me begging for a classroom, he would be shocked into sickness and consternation.
Kendrick Lamar once told me (not
directly) âADHD crazy.â He was not wrong. âMaybe if I throw on an album itâll
break this boredom.â I like lying to myself. Santanaâs
âAbraxasâ nears its
end and my fiscal policy slides beckon with a sneer.
Once again, I am asking for
your attention. Cursing in every single language I know, I blink to clear the
glaze from my eyes and hope that the dryness doesnât cause my eyeballs to fall
from their sockets. Being bored to tears might help.
