Seat's Taken.

A post over at Law School for Dummies about a law student with particularly bad halitosis reminded me about a post I'd been watching to write for some time now, a want that was somewhat revived with the coming and going of my Wills, Trusts, and Estates exam. But we will get to that girl a little later. Basically, I've been watching to write about students you do not want to sit near in class.

My first semester law school a slightly older female student sat behind me, she seemed nice enough. Although I knew she was always looking at my screen to see what she'd missed. This wasn't such a big deal since it was before I started using phrases like "some fucking idiot..." regularly in my notes. What was annoying was when she'd bust about the box of triscuits, block of cheese, knife, and a cutting board and proceed to snack on in it in class. Did I also mention she had a seatmate? And that they both used laptops? If I was her seatmate I might have shot her. All I had to worry about was getting crumbs on myself and the crunching noises¹.

Flash forward to second semester, Little Miss Government Cheese didn't sit behind me, she moved more towards the center of the room and I firmly cemented my spot in the back row. Occasional glances across the room would reveal a new object sitting on her desk, something like this, only it also involved a fan-so it constantly disbursed fragrance. A cursory review of who was sitting around her led my seatmate and I to one conclusion, someone was really smelly over there (which was later confirmed by a friend who sat over there). There was a guy with such bad body odor that Miss Government Cheese deemed she needed to bring an air-freshener on a daily basis. I wouldn't know personally since after that I made it my personal goal never get someone close enough to him to find out.

The final, and most likely most egregious student you do not want to sit near is one I believe I've mentioned here before. The girl from my Evidence and Wills, Trusts and Estates classes. I feel bad even writing about it since she clearly had a medical problem or some sort, but after dealing with it over the course of two-4 credit classes any sort of compassion is gone. This girl had what could only be described as a combination of Narcolepsy, Sleep Apnea, and Darth Vader Syndrome² (she was also the suspect of the body odor stench in my evidence class). I literally have never heard this girl stay up for a period of more than 15 minutes. And as soon as she falls asleep she begins snoring, only to be woken up by her own sleep apnea gasping for breath roughly every 5 minutes. Even when she is awake you can hear her breathing from a substantial distance. To make matters worth, she appears oblivious to all this. Yesterday my friends and I set up camp our Trusts exam only to have her sit right by us. I promply declared the light was no good back there, giving all my friends an excuse to move. I was roughly 20 feet away, and towards the end of the exam I could hear her breathing.

I'm still not entirely sure there is away to avoid any of these people (since Darth Vader and Miss Government Cheese were always late), unless you're ballsy enough to go to the professor and ask for a seat change-which I have seen done over Darth Vader-you might just be stuck in your own personal hell twice a week for 16 weeks.

¹Which, I really think there should be a universal rule against eating crunchy foods in class (unless you're me and it's a granola bar), but that is a whole different post.
²Yes, it is a syndrome.