100 Fun Things to Do During a Boring Lecture

1. Bring a blowhorn. Use it when you ask or answer a question.

2. Heckle the professor.

3. Hire a video crew to come to the class. If asked about it, say that you have to tape the lecture for a friend.

4. Bring a water gun. Shoot the professor when his back is turned.

5. Get the other students in your row to do the wave.

6. Bring a small chalkboard to class. Ask the professor if you can borrow his chalk to take notes.

7. Contradict everything the professor says. Offer irrefutable scientific proof.

8. If it's a math lecture, claim that the professor misspelled pi.

9. When the professor asks a question, raise your hand. If the professor calls on you, point to someone in the next row and say "He knows." Pick a different person each time.

10. Buy a doll. When you go to class, leave the doll in your chair, along with your notebook and pen. Say that you have an important meeting to go to, and that the doll will be taking notes for you.

11. Bring a typewriter. Use it to take notes.

12. Write a love note. Sign it "a secret admirer". Get someone to pass it to the professor.

13. Get up to go to the bathroom five or six times during the class. Change clothes every time.

14. While taking notes, write vulgar words every few lines. If anyone asks, say you have Tourette's syndrome.

15. Buy a watermelon. Give it to the professor. If he/she asks, say "They were out of apples."

16. Bring a small tape player. Play a tape of the previous lecture. Take notes on both.

17. If it's an English class, ask how the theory of relativity relates to Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream".

18. Pretend to be asleep until five minutes before the end of class. Then wake up and explain that you missed the lecture, and ask the professor to summarize what he/she talked about.

19. Bring a can of spray paint. Use it to take notes on the classroom wall.

20. Bring a fully-stocked picnic basket to class. Explain that you didn't have time to eat breakfast.

21. Wear a loincloth to class. If anyone asks, say that it is your costume for the school play, and you didn't have time to change out of it.

22. Tear out pages of the textbook and make little origami animals out of them. Have a whole menagerie by the end of class. Give them to the professor as a token of your esteem.

23. Bring a fishing rod. Try to catch things on the professor's desk.

24. Bring a tape player and a tape of a thunderstorm. Keep it hidden. Sometime during the lecture, start the tape, stand up, claim that the professor has angered the gods and leave. Watch to see how many students follow you after the tape starts playing.

25. Make reserved seating cards and place them on the desks before class.

26. Tell the professor you are on a new experimental cold medication that may have strange side effects. Every ten minutes or so, run around the room screaming. Afterward, claim that you have no memory of what just happened.

27. Claim that you are the new student teacher, and that you are to give the lecture for that class. If the professor agrees, lecture on a subject completely opposite the to subject of the class. If the professor objects, say that the students should have a wide range of knowledge.

28. Switch the professor's lecture notes with your history notes from last term.

29. Raise your hand and ask when the movie is going to start.

30. Bring a flash camera. Take pictures every few minutes, using a very bright flash. If anyone complains, say that you didn't see any sign saying you couldn't bring cameras.

31. Bring a light bulb. Hold it over your head whenever you have the answer to a question.

32. Bring an easel and a paint set. Paint a portrait of the professor during the lecture. Say that it is a homework assignment for art class

33. Sneeze very loudly. Then, have the person next to you sneeze, then the person next to him, and so on. See how long it takes before the professor sneezes.

34. When the professor comes in, say, very loudly, "Hey! A substitute! All right!" Claim that the real professor said you could have lecture outside.

35. Come to class wearing the same outfit as the professor. Call the professor a copycat.

36. If it's a geology lecture, switch the quartz crystals with New Folger's Crystals and see if the professor notices. Have a hidden camera.

37. Hide a ticking clock under the podium. Call in a bomb threat.

38. Write your assignment on Plato on your little sister's modeling clay.

39. Ask questions in a foreign language you know the professor doesn't know. Act angry when he/she doesn't understand you.

40. Come to class dressed as a professional wrestler. Tell people you joined the wrestling team. Bodyslam anyone who doesn't believe you.

41. When the professor comes in, suddenly scream, "NOOOOOO! Not him! Not professor Johnson!! They let him teach again! Noooooooooo!" then run out of them room. See how many people follow you.

42. Turn your row into a mosh pit.

43. Before class starts, turn all the desks upside down. Sit on them like you would normally.

44. Two words: American Gladiators.

45. Make requests like people do at rock concerts. ("Relativity! Relativity! Einstein rocks!")

46. Bring popcorn. Throw it and the professor. Complain that these trained animal shows aren't what they used to be.

47. Bring a tape player and a tape of the school bell. Play it every 15 minutes.

48. When the professor calls on you, mumble inconprehensibly. Answer every question in this fashion. See how long it takes before the professor stops calling on you.

49. When you take a test, hire a security guard to stand by your desk and make sure no one cheats off your paper.

50. Make up a strange religious cult and distribute flyers for it during class. If it is a religious studies class, complain that your cult was not included in the textbook, and demand that they get a new one.

51. Smoke a pipe and respond to each point the professor makes by waving it and saying, "Quite right, old bean!"

52. Wear X-Ray Specs. Every few minutes, ask the professor to focus the overhead projector.

53. Sit in the front row and spend the lecture filing your teeth into sharp points.

54. Sit in the front and color in your textbook.

55. When the professor calls your name in roll, respond "that's my name, don't wear it out!"

56. Introduce yourself to the class as the "master of the pan flute".

57. Give the professor a copy of The Watchtower. Ask him where his soul would go if he died tomorrow.

58. Wear earmuffs. Every few minutes, ask the professor to speak louder.

59. Leave permanent markers by the dry-erase board.

60. Squint thoughtfully while giving the professor strange looks. In the middle of lecture, tell him he looks familiar and ask whether he was ever in an episode of Starsky and Hutch.

61. Ask whether the first chapter will be on the test. If the professor says no, rip the pages out of your textbook.

62. Become entranced with your first physics lecture, and declare your intention to pursue a career in measurements and units.

63. Sing your questions.

64. Speak only in rhymes and hum the Underdog theme.

65. When the professor calls roll, after each name scream "THAT'S MEEEEE! Oh, no, sorry."

66. Insist in a Southern drawl that your name really is Wuchen Li. If you actually are Chinese, insist that your name is Vladimir Fernandez O'Reilly.

67. Page through the textbook scratching each picture and sniffing it.

68. Wear your pajamas. Pretend not to notice that you've done so.

69. Hold up a piece of paper that says in large letters "CHECK YOUR FLY".

70. Inform the class that you are Belgian royalty, and have a friend bang cymbals together whenever your name is spoken.

71. Stare continually at the professor's crotch. Occassionally lick your lips.

72. Address the professor as "your excellency".

73. Sit in the front, sniff suspiciously, and ask the professor if he's been drinking.

74. Shout "WOW!" after every sentence of the lecture.

75. Bring a mirror and spend the lecture writing Bible verses on your face.

76. Ask whether you have to come to class.

77. Present the professor with a large fruit basket.

78. Bring a "seeing eye rooster" to class.

79. Feign an unintelligible accent and repeatedly ask, "Vet ozzle haffen dee henvay?" Become aggitated when the professor can't understand you.

80. Relive your Junior High days by leaving chalk stuffed in the chalkboard erasers.

81. Watch the professor through binoculars.

82. Start a "wave" in a large lecture hall.

83. Ask to introduce your "invisible friend" in the empty seat beside you, and ask for one extra copy of each handout.

84. When the professor turns on his laser pointer, scream "AAAGH! MY EYES!"

85. Correct the professor at least ten times on the pronunciation of your name, even it's Smith. Claim that the i is silent.

86. Sit in the front row reading the professor's graduate thesis and snickering.

87. As soon as the first bell rings, volunteer to put a problem on the board. Ignore the professor's reply and proceed to do so anyway.

88. Claim that you wrote the class text book.

89. Claim to be the teaching assistant. If the real one objects, jump up and scream "IMPOSTER!"

90. Spend the lecture blowing kisses to other students.

91. Every few minutes, take a sheet of notebook paper, write "Signup Sheet #5" at the top, and start passing it around the room.

92. Stand to ask questions. Bow deeply before taking your seat after the professor answers.

93. Wear a cape with a big S on it. Inform classmates that the S stands for "stud".

94. Interrupt every few minutes to ask the professor, "Can you spell that?"

95. Disassemble your pen. "Accidently" propel pieces across the room while playing with the spring. Go on furtive expeditions to retrieve the pieces. Repeat.

96. Wink at the professor every few minutes.

97. In the middle of lecture, ask your professor whether he believes in ghosts.

98. Laugh heartily at everything the professor says. Snort when you laugh.

99. Wear a black hooded cloak to class and ring a bell.

100. Ask your math professor to pull the roll chart above the blackboard of ancient Greek trade routes down farther because you can't see Macedonia.