fandomhigh | Slacking - First Meeting [Friday, Period 1]

Max wasn't sure how a class on slacking had gotten scheduled so early in the day, but he found it vaguely amusing, really. He had already located his assigned classroom so that he wouldn't embarrass himself too much by wandering around lost. He even arrived early to class, but that was mostly so that he could prop his feet up on his desk, slip on his sunglasses (they were a great invention, and his trip to Fandom was probably worth it to discover the things even if nothing else came of it), and take a nap. He woke up when the first student arrived, but he didn't give any sign that he had. He wanted a chance to observe them.

Once the count of students matched the list he had been given he spoke without shifting position. "Welcome to Slacking. I am Tribune Antillar Maximus. You may refer to me as 'Tribune' or as 'Maximus' or as 'Max'. I'm not planning on this being too terribly formal." He sat up and slipped off his sunglasses. "That said, you are each here to learn, and I am here to ensure that you do just that. Keep that in mind during our sessions."

He pushed himself to his feet and settled into a relaxed stance, voice falling automatically into the steady cadence of someone who taught people how to stay alive. "The first thing we need to do is establish a shared definition of our subject matter. For the purposes of this course you should understand 'slacking' to refer to the productive avoidance of assignments. I suspect that each of you have found yourself in positions where someone in authority over you is incompetent, stupid, or both. And if you haven't yet, well, it won't be too long. Such situations are an inevitable part of life. When these situatiosn arise you find that you are much better at determining how to accomplish things than your sueprvisor is, and further you find that they tend to give you orders to do things in an inefficient or even counter-productive manner. Slacking allows you to get your incompetent superiors to leave you alone while you get real work done."

Max's gray eyes scanned the room calmly. "Since your incompetent superiors are, in fact, incompetent, they expect work to take far longer than it really does. This, in turn, allows you to spend much of your time relaxing. A successful slacker is able to deflect the attention of their superiors, get their real work done, and do whatever they feel like doing with the rest of their time."

"For today's meeting we're going to keep things simple. State your name and describe a situation from your own life where slacking has been useful, or where it would have been useful if you had been better at it. Then, since I have no desire to waste anyone's time, you're free to do as you wish. Talk to one another, talk to me, leave..." He shrugged his massive shoulders. "Oh, and if anyone is interested, I am looking for an assistant for this class."

[The assistant position is actually open here, so if anyone is interested feel free to chime in.]

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Max is paying rather a lot of attention to what people do when he lectures, but he's unlikely to call anyone out for not paying attention or for sleeping or anything else, really. At least not today.

Alex was still keeping up his relaxed, lazy, head on the desk posture since the teacher didn't seem to mind.

He was kind of digging this class. Slacking was something he could do well.

Fiona looked sideways at the idiot from the fire the other day before pointedly looking away.

Oh, well, someone was looking at him. Lucky him, right? He just looked right back and smiled sweetly. If she was paying attention to him, he'd obviously gotten to her in some way.

She caught the sweet smile... and before getting angry, thought of her father, oddly enough. That put a genuine smile on her own face, which she turned to the subject at hand.

Aww, now she was smiling at him. He wondered how much it would take to get her to react. So, he went with the easiest non vocal thing he could think of: he winked.

Edited 2009-05-15 15:19 (UTC)

She raised an eyebrow.

He laughed under his breath and shook his head. She was the one looking at him, she could do the work.

She tilted her head.

She'd gotten a laugh out of him, hadn't she?

Edward was looking at the teacher, then at the other students, then back at the teacher. And so on, and so forth.

Valentine couldn't help grinning a little to herself as she listened, head tilted, to the lecture, especially on the part of incompetent superiors. She couldn't help being amused with thoughts of irony, wondering if, as this Max guy stood talking about incompetent superiors, he realized that he was a superior and therefor probably incompetent himself.

Helen had NOT signed up for this class and she was not very pleased with not being able to get out of it. Still, what he said made a good deal of sense. There had often been times when the priests had assigned something to do that was quite ridiculous and got in the way of really important things, so maybe...

Marco decided it would be completely allowable to sleep during this particular class.

Slacking - First Meeting [Friday, Period 1]

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