Story by Clock of one of our Lecture Halls

I am the most crucial and most loved (most hated at times) item of your lecture hall. Many of you look at me in a 2 hour lecture more than you do to your girlfriend in 2 weeks or even 2 months. I am the bane of lives of many of you during the lectures; I am the clock of your class.

Let me walk you through my observations in a typical 2 hour morning class in my lecture Hall:

As soon as its 8:05 or 8:10am, one gloomy faced person enters the scene (read lecture hall). His gloomy face indicates as if his family doctor has advised him against laughing and like he hasn’t kind of laughed for decades.

Lecture Hall is empty and first interaction he does is with me, giving me one of his typical melancholic looks waiting for me to hit 8:15 so that students join in the class.

I smirk at his hope well aware nothing is gonna happen at 8:15!!!

I hit 8:15 and few guys start settling in. These are the most obedient, compliant and dutiful pupil of the school. I call them Confucius (great scholars). These pupils are like they have never done anything wrong in their lives. They sleep in time, get up at fixed time, and sleep standard number of hours. Damn, they don’t even need me (alarm clock) to get up in the morning! They take bang 7 minutes for breakfast, 9 minutes for lunch and 8.5 minutes for dinner.

Everything is just perfect with them-Their heart beats exactly 72 times a minute, eat just right number of calories, and drink tea/coffee in standard 1.5 minutes. Their hair are doped with two palms mustard oil, every single hair at the right place, powered spectacles, all notes of previous lectures in their bag et al. Their bulky bags suggest they have kind of packed every single book/notebook from their rooms before coming to this lecture hall!

The gloomy-faced gives me yet another melancholic look seeing damn 10 students in the class of 70. I feel like guffawing, but his somber face stops me!

I hit 8:20, these Confucius have taken their hand outs for the day and finished half of the slides.

Gloomy person stares at me and gives a dirty “angry-man” look, like he would just jump down from this 2nd floor. Its 8:23 and now the Normal pupils start accumulating in the lecture hall. I call them Confused (normal human beings).

There’s a stark contrast between these Confucius and Confused.

Confused have like kind of determined congenitally that they won’t give me a damn. They never sleep in time and can’t even imagine waking up for morning lecture without me. And then keep begging me for every extra 5 minutes of sleep. I feel like not ringing for them after those 5 minutes, but reminiscing soap-operas of gloomy-faced for coming late in the lecture hall; I somehow wake them up to send them to the lecture hall.

Soap Opera king, our gloomy-faced, now opens his blazer, which only he knows why he was wearing at first place, to start his lecture! He starts his lecture and so start these Confused- glancing at me surreptitiously every minute waiting for lecture to be over! God, these Confused could wait at least few minutes.

“I won’t tolerate any indiscipline in the class. I won’t allow anyone to come late in the class. I won’t let anyone coming late sit in for the class quiz. I won’t give CP marks to those arriving late in the class. I won’t do this. I won’t do that. I won’t do these. I won’t do those…,” gloomy-faced goes on and on and on. I curse myself for these admonishings to Confused by this melancholic. I wish I could come down the wall and stuff his hanging tie in his mouth.

I look at one guy sitting just under me, 5 minutes through the lecture and he takes his first 35 second yawn, then starts the second guy, and then the third. Yawn is very contagious! Two guys at the end of row have already eloped in their nap. Who cares to listen to this daily sulking of the Prof!

“Optimization, by definition, is solving problems which seek to maximize or minimize real or virtual functions by systematically choosing real or integer variables from within allowed sets to formulate scalar real-valued objective functions, then formulating linear programming using solver complying with optimization theory and techniques is Optimization. A very powerful and efficient tool to do optimization,” gloomy-faced gave this sermon, like was kind of taking revenge from Confused for coming late.

Most Confused have eloped into their naps, rest were just glancing at me surreptitiously, like begging me to run fast. Gloomy-faced, on the other hand, was smirking devilishly knowing I was helpless. I wish I could just hit 10:15 directly from 8:25.

Its 10:15 now, struggle of Confused for this lecture is over, they are walking to achieve yet another “Mission impossible” starting at 10:45, while I am to face the same situation half an hour down the line with other Confucius and Confused groups. I feel like free-riding from my duty, I don’t want to witness those 2 hour traumas of my friends-these Confused. I don’t want to be the clock. I don’t want to be the clock!