What to do if you are bored in class?

It is that time again, and you are back in school. The teachers are very different in how they teach. Some teachers are extremely alive and on top of their subject and then, there are others that the moment you cross their threshold, you feel a major tiredness or shift in conscious coming over you. Sounds familiar?

The moment you sit in your favorite seat in your favorite part of the room, you feel that you want to place your head on the desk and go fast to sleep. You feel yourself daydreaming constantly. Your class should be called Boring Class 101, but that is not always the case. I usually tell students that feel that way should take a quick check by going to the nearest mirror and looking at the image that appears. That image is you and you are boring. Shake yourself up, you make it happen. You should have asked around before selecting this class. Your fellow students would have told you that the instructor was somewhat boring or uninteresting. Now, if you do not have a choice then you really need to take the following solutions to heart.

Tips for students how to overcome boredom in class: 

• Solution number one, try not to drink too much water before the class and get plenty of rest the night before.
• Solution number two, many students feel the urge to drink some very popular, but legal drugs like caffeine before entering a class that is horribly boring.
• Solution number three, how is your vitamin intake these days. Are you taking the right vitamins, minerals and legal super drugs today?

• Solution number four, are you up to taking active notes. I know when I see a student drawing pictures and cute cartoons on their pages, I am amazed, but I do not stop them from doing so. However, if I noticed a student writing a long, but lovely letter to a very good friend, I would stop that student. The reason is that the student who is drawing all those delicious, and fancy looking pictures with the curves, circles and gigantic lines is really paying much more attention to me.
• Solution five, play games with yourself. Try to see how many good notes and writing styles you can incorporate during the lecture. Give yourself short timings on finishing topics. Make sure you have colorful notes. Use different colored pens and pencil colors. That may keep the visual sense interested.
• Solution six, try to prepare yourself with interesting questions to post to the teacher. Get excited about the next lesson. Review in your mind's eye the day or night before what the teacher might present.
• Solution seven, of course, you can always drink water, but not too much, sipping water is much better; breathe differently, stay close to the window where you can get fresh air. You might even be able to step out of the class for a moment to get a change of venue. You can always go to the bathroom, but you may miss some of the lectures. Don't forget to have a few good note-taking friends you can copy the notes from in case you do fall fast asleep. Try to sit next to someone special, just being near that person may keep you awake. You do not want to be embarrassed.

Showing a couple of pictures relating to the topic being discussed. Pictures can stimulate students' imagination and eagerness in learning. The pictures can be in the series activity that creates a story, or separated activities without any texts in it. The emphasis of this activity is to activate students' skill in making sentences through the stimulating pictures. The first step of implementing this activity is to ask students to list all the verbs, adjectives, and adverbs describing the pictures.

Giving challenges to students through the words guessing that relates to the topic being discussed. Teachers should be aware that they must tell students the topic, which will be learned in that students can direct their imagination to the target word that will be guessed, not drifting away from the context intended. For example, the words that will be guessed are made a phone call, and then teachers provide a sentence with the gaps in the sentence as in If you want to buy a ticket in the busy days, you must make a reservation. This activity will be felt engaging if students have already mastered most of the words around the target words. This will help students as a tool to strengthen their memory on the keywords of the topic. In addition, it will be an exciting challenge for students if it is allocated in the beginning of teaching.