Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme
Talking of seminars (or 'serminars', what's that Tideliar, a cross between a lecture and a sermon?), I'm sure you are familiar with that particular feeling in a warm, dark seminar room. You know what I'm talking about.
First your eyelids become unbearably heavy. Then your neck loses all strength and control, and your head slowly, oh so slowly, rolls forward and suddenly you jerk back, eyes wide open. I'm not asleep! What did I miss? The speaker drones on and on and you wish someone would open a window and why are the slides so dark and hmm I should probably increase the Tm of my PCR, and perhaps try her way of mutagenesis, I wonder if the student made up the kanamycin correctly — WHAM. Head back, sore neck. Questions? What?
And you are totally, utterly impotent against it.
It's horrible. And it is often nothing to do with the speaker, and everything to do with the soporific nature of every bloody seminar room every designed — and that most of our seminars are at lunchtime. The morning coffee has worn off and you're digesting lunch, and all you want is sleep, sweet sleep.
But if you happen to look across the room and see your boss suffering the same fate, then it's not so quite bad.
Hah.
Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:— Do I wake or sleep?
Comments
Oh, in this new place of mine the seminar, or the "larger group meeting with everyone that do research about roughly the same thing" is at 8 am!
Giving a talk a that time proved to be strange, I'm not really awake and I forgot to "warm" up my vocie... not much of a morning talker ;)
And listening to the other ones have been more of a "I didn't really get up did I" - morning coffe or not.
But the feeling is recognized. I usually try and not get the room as dark and not warm!! A window open to let air go through or, as I did Wednesday, lowered the thermostat to 65F. That helped a little, altough I guess the "it's not personal towards you It's the Seminar drowsiness" =)
Posted by: challenge | December 15, 2006 12:20 PM
Argh. Had this problem in lab meeting yesterday. Made it difficult to think up useful questions to ask, since I was dozing for much of the talk.
I seem to recall that the Chair of the department fell asleep, in the front row, during one of my student seminars way back when. Can't blame him really.
Posted by: The Whiffleroon | December 16, 2006 03:40 AM