Seminar Blues

I’ve just been through the harrowing experience of sitting through a seminar. Although the actual sitting wasn’t that hard – I’ve mastered the art of finding comfort in highly cramped positions - it was the never-ending blabber punctuated only by sheer idiocy in terms of questions that got to me. This is what my day comprised…

Here are some of the more memorable speakers and for the sake of my well-being I shall refer to all of them as being male.

1. Reader Leader: Basically, Mr. Reader (true to his name) just read out from a sheet to the room. When he wasn’t reading from the sheet, he was reading from the slides surely compiled by someone else, or worse, lifted off the Internet! YIPES! Why do I make such an allegation? Well, if you didn’t know what a whopper is – would you have it in your slides? Moreover, would you mispronounce it (as whooper), if you had it in your slides? There, I rest my case. It was such a rejuvenating start to the day – I couldn’t help but look forward to the rest…

2. Jargon-Spewer: This dude was well prepared – I’ll give him that. But, he was a total walking-talking-living-breathing text book. His presentation was nicely peppered with jargon galore and his slides had a nice text-bookish kind of perfection to them; nice to look at but not very nice to suffer through during a lecture. Oh yeah, and the dude thought that selling jewelry to women is sort of a marketing challenge! Go figure.

3. Enthusiastic Yeller: This guy yelled at the top of his voice, didn’t use the mike and bounced around the room to keep us all awake the whole time! He spoke so enthusiastically, that his booming voice actually cracked on more than a couple of occasions. Also, I noticed that the guy had his photograph at the corner of every slide!! Talk about being paranoid about plagiarism!!

4. The Others: They were a blur of people asked to summarize their life’s learnings in under 10 minutes. I thought it rather harsh on them, but little did I know what was in store for us poor listeners! Random snippets of slides explained, the rest left to who-knows-what. Skimming and skidding galore, no-stops-to-breathe-lest-I-miss-out-on-this-last-point kind of endless chatter. Didn’t know when one speaker ended and the other began. Sheer confusion culminating into lunch.

Sheeeeeesh!

Profile of a serial topper and other scorers...

DISCLAIMER: Apart from the fact that the title sounds very much like I'm going to describe cereal toppings... there is nothing in this post about cornflakes or fruits chopped into them. Sorry.

Who is a serial topper and how would YOU recognise one?

For one, they are great actors. They do a fabulous job of pretending to have not studied. Obviously, they know the book and the extra material back-to-front, and have taken the time out to re-check meticulously taken-down notes with a couple of Harvard texts. They come in many profiles depending on how they view their mothers and what kind of latent personalities they hide within their skulls... These are some of the MOST dangerous.

The Drama Queen: This kind of topper is most effective when the subject is female. They deliver tear-jerkers extremely well and have fabulous excuses that include,

1. I didn't know about the test.
2. I didn't have the book.
3. I was really ill.
4. My dog died.
5. The aunt of my second cousin twice removed three times over got married for the twentieth time.

As these excuses are delivered with the appropriate expressions and hints of paleness... it is almost impossible for ANYONE to see through them. And you are most likely to actually "help" this person out - by offering your notes or a seat next to you or maybe just a sugar-boiled sweet.

Post-test trauma: You’d be amazed how soon the lost book is found, dead dog jumps back to life and weirdo aunt disappears into thin air as soon as the results are out. She has topped – and you’ve just scraped by… oh yeah, you let her take a couple of pointers from your answer sheet too…

Mr. Nonchalance Personified: This topper is usually someone with a fabulous life - who looks like a Greek God, has the best car for miles, owns a couple of people in every place worth its salt and generally oozes 'I-don't-give-a-shit' from every pore.

Please beware, he has no life apart from the fab one he portrays – and that’s fictional. All he does is cram when he gets home and possibly hits the gym for a couple of hours before revising (yeah people DO revise!).

Post-test trauma: Although his demeanor before the test will seem to indicate that he doesn’t care, he does care very much. If he hasn’t topped – he’s probably just lost out to Ms. Queen by a sliver of a quarter of a fraction of a mark. This dude continues the pretense of being ultra-shocked at his results, though, and “wonders” how he did so well!

The Baby: The Baby is the MOST dangerous of them all and should prompt you to run for miles. As a matter of fact, anyone behaving this way should get your adrenaline pumping and flight would be the best option.

Baby uses weapons such as;

1. Oh, I just don’t understand how MRP is regulated, can you help me?
2. Hey, I need you to just run through the DNA replication in prokaryotes with me once.
3. Can I borrow your notes? They are a great way to study the economic problems faced by third world American nations.

Post-test trauma: The weapons have worked well and have sapped you of what little knowledge you have, sponged off the rest of the class and Baby ends up scoring higher than anyone in the most under-handed manner possible. (*shudder)

So now that you know who these hardened scorers are, steer clear. Bury your head into your books and notes waaaaay before the test. That way, even if you don’t really study at least no one will disturb you to beg, borrow or steal. And remember, you can neither beat nor join the serial topper, so don’t even try.