Contents

...as inspired by my Article Writing Class. If you ever wondered what goes on behind closed doors up in that Ivory Tower, what actually runs through the minds of some of the evidently brightest left cranial hemispheres on the planet (or at the very least in central PA), your curiosities will now be quenched.

Do curiosities get thirsty? I guess so. Let's go with that.

And now, in grisly detail, I present:

My Concentration During Department Colloquia  

1. Gorge on free pre-colloquium coffee and cookies like some kind of bitter, sleep-deprived graduate shark whose waters have been chummed with empty calories and caffeine.
2. Speaker makes some kind of remotely amusing topical joke.
3. Realize that the presentation has absolutely nothing to do with research interests and will be about as enthralling as watching the history of astroturf on Modern Marvels. Stew in indignation of sitting in a location unsuitable for an inconspicuous exit.
4. Wonder why newspapers still print The Family Circus, even if everyone I can think of hates it and all its nauseatingly smarmy, malapropism-spewing self-righteousness...
5. Crap. Did I miss something important? No, he's still discussing the outline of the talk. Like he's been doing for the last 20 minutes.
6. Get distracted by something shiny. Usually, it's the speaker's increasingly sweaty bald spot.
7. Professor rudely interrupts with a thinly veiled attempt to sell his own research accomplishments while callously dismissing the speaker's.
8. Blood sugar spike
9. Get lost in a dizzying orgy of crowded, low-resolution graphs and nonsensical hieroglyphs that pass as equations. Should have been paying attention... is n_M the mass function or the number density? And what the hell is "enthalpy?" Sounds like an '80s hair band.
10.  Fantasize about feeding Sarah Palin into a wood chipper.
11.  Look at all these undergrads at rapt attention, so young, so full of energy. Sickening. No, don't even... put that hand down! Don't even think about... great, you're asking a question. Just for the sake of asking a question. Awesome. Yeah, we're all impressed with you now.
12.  What was the name of that actress on Mork and Mindy? Dammit, this is really gonna bother me...
13.  Another faculty member rips into the speaker and they verbally spar in that clumsy, stilted way that academics do. Jesus, it's like watching chickens peck at each other over prime spots at a feed lot.
14.  Wonder if it's possible to make a miniature house out of bacon. Like a gingerbread house, but made from a heaping pile of nitrates and pig fat instead of processed sugar and Americana.
15.  Diabetic coma from sugar/caffeine crash
16.  People are applauding. Rouse from slumber like an irritable, tranquilized bear.