Distraction and reproduction

College can be difficult when you have the attention span of a goldfish.\nIn class I’m either daydreaming or I’m asleep. Last week, the sound of my own moan actually woke me up. But now I’m getting off-topic. \nOne of my favorite alternatives to paying attention in class is the Reproduction Game. In this game I invented, I pretend that a comet strikes the planet and kills every human being on earth except those in my classroom, because our room is surrounded by death-proof walls. I then have to choose who in the class I would mate with to ensure the future of our species. This game isn’t as easy as it sounds. As a psychology and English major, good-looking men are scarce. (In one of my classes it’s a toss-up between the chain-smoker and the dude who looks like a girl). And this game is not purely sexual either, as it is obviously important to consider which traits you want passed along to your offspring and all successive generations intelligence, courage, agility for comet-avoidance).\nWriting poetry about teachers is another pursuit that satisfies my wandering mind. I had a biology teacher who used to sport a pink cow-hide vest. I can’t tell you much about molecular genetics, but I did write 50 rhyming couplets exploring the question of how my teacher found and killed a pink cow.\nA few days ago, I laid out all my notes to begin outlining a paper I have to write about British poetry. An hour later, I had made three bids on eBay and reset all my ring tones to Pussycat Dolls. When I finally took a look at my notes, I realized that they were full of poems about teachers rather than information on poems themselves. \n“I don’t know anything about poetry,” I desperately confessed to my professor at her office hours.\n“You know more than you think you do,” she insisted, under the impression that I am a receptive student because I attend class and scribble things into my notebook when she speaks. She began throwing around words like “Petrarchan” and “iambic pentameter” and I nodded along like the good student I pretend to be. \nBut when I tried to recall our conversation later, all I could think of was her hypnotic screen saver. I tried to remember class discussions, but all I could remember was that I would probably choose to bear the children of the guy in the second row because he has nice large biceps but still seems like he would hold a woman gently. “I know less than I thought I did,” I realized as I put my notes away. Then I Facebooked for three hours in search of Mr. Biceps. \nI swear I was going to wrap up this column with some great commentary about life. I had an idea of how to do this when I began but the thought escapes me now. The consultant on duty in this computer lab looks like he would make a good father.