How to keep yourself entertained...

I'm going to have to try this with my other first year classes this week.

I arrived at my first of my weekly tutorial sessions for the new intake, and the room was in use. I was pleased to see so many people waiting, and sat listening in to the conversations around me... mostly along the lines of 'are these every week?', 'do you have seminars in your other courses?' and 'ooh, pretty hat!' No one gave me a second glance.

Classroom became free and everyone ambled in, I dumped my bags by the desk I like to sit on and heap papers on and started rummaging around in all the bags trying to find the text we were reading in that class. Again not very different to the rest of the room.

At this point, the dept secretary arrived to turn off the equipment from the previous class (bless but the academics aren't allowed to touch things anymore, especially expensive shiny technology... too many breakages)*** As she was doing this, we started chatting. Job done, she wandered off.

It was at this point I realised that the room had gone quite quiet, and then the mature student suddenly asked 'are you the tutor?' with a stunned expression on his face, rest of the group were also expressing surprise (or maybe hangovers... its difficult to tell sometimes). 'Yup' I answered, at which point the surprise levels seemed to rise..., 'not what you expected?' 'Um no...' came the answer.

I like startling people, it makes for entertaining tutorials.

*** The academics vs. technology seems to be quite common to the depts I've been in, my undergraduate dept got through several coffee machines before the secretary realised the problem... no one ever put water in it.