Change is something we resist. Habits are hard to break. This is not news.

So I went into class yesterday, determined to somehow regain my ability to pay attention. I haven't been studying or doing my homework the way I should. Yeah, I pass the tests, but it seems silly to slide by, when I am actually quite interested in this work.

I sat on the other side of the room, in the back row instead of the front row, next to someone who is a good influence (and half my age). She (mostly jokingly) told me I had to behave myself. You see, I tend to make a few jokes now and then. More on this in a bit.

Another catalyst for this change is that there is a new person in our class who flunked Anatomy/Physiology two terms ago, took just A&P with us last term, and now will continue with our group in all our classes. She is never prepared, and often doesn't get what's going on. I'm not entirely convinced it's all just habit; she seems to have some ADD or something going on, a general lack of attention and synthesis. (Understand, though, that in my new life I hesitate to pathologize the disorders I so keenly understood and looked for as a teacher. This is now, I must keep reminding myself.)

Our little cadre are motivated, studious, and fun-loving people. (What a pretentious use of British standard verb tense, eh?) We don't begrudge sharing answers or working through kinesiology puzzles together, but we don't appreciate malingerers. We don't cotton to the idea of someone asking for all the answers to a worksheet because they just slacked it. Guess who slacks it?

I made a choice to move so that this person would not sit by me. I found that I was tired of sharing all my colored pencils, of offering a highlighter that was not the right color, of being asked the simplest questions that had obvious or easily found answers, like, "when is the blood pressure homework due?" (it's on the syllabus, honey). These questions and behaviors are constant.

My day in my new seat was better than I've had so far this term, as far as my attention to the class went. I had forgotten that putting oneself in proximity to others who do as one would like to do often results in one doing well. And so it went.

Several people mentioned to me that they understood my change of seat. A few more mentioned that, without me cracking wise as usual, it was less fun in class, and that it felt like I was absent that day. The instructor said she missed my comments. Funny, and all this time I just felt like an attention whore who went just a step too far on many occasions, distracting from lecture. How nice to be missed.

But I'm still sitting in back by K because she's a good role model and just as perfectionist as I used to be.

Muscles attaching at the tibio-femoral joint? Anyone? Anyone?