Same seats!

Remember when you were little and went on field trips? And everybody sat on the bus and then had to sit in the same seats on the way back? Remember that kid who would always shout "same seats!!!"?

I miss that kid. I want that kid back. I want him to walk into all my classrooms and shout that for me.

For the first half of high school everybody pretty much had assigned seats in alphabetical order. This was no doubt in order to help teachers learn the names of their students.

Something strange happened toward the end of high school, though. Most of the teachers knew us already and we could, get this, SIT WHERE WE WANTED. It was glorious. The R's and the S's and the T's who had typically stuck to only one another were hobnobbing with the C's and the K's and even the occasional M. It was amazing.

Even though we didn't technically have assigned seats, it became pretty clear after the first couple weeks that we DID still have assigned seats - we just got to pick them. Everybody had their standard seat every day in every class. It was a good system. I liked it. I could sit with whomever I wanted to sit with, but I still had the stability and consistency of an assigned seat.

It was the exact same situation in college. Everybody just sits where they want but after a couple of weeks, we all settle into "our" seat.

LATELY, though... the whole system has been thrown off! I arrived in class a couple of weeks ago to discover that my seat was TAKEN! It was awful. You know what that means? It means I had to take someone ELSE'S seat. And THEY had to take someone else's seat. And it just kept going and going and going and going... Everybody was so discombobulated.

This has happened THREE times so far out of my five classes. I've been completely uprooted. And it should bother me, but it does. And it bothers other people, too. I promise. We're territorial creatures of habit and we can't help it.

And then there are those people who INTENTIONALLY take other people's seats just to screw up the rest of the class. Oooh, those people make me mad...

Please, for the good of the whole, stick to your seat.