The Fly on the Wall: Diary of a Bored Professor

It is the eighth hour of our weekly staff meeting. Right now, the head of the department is talking about the new cafeteria lunch menu, and she has been going on for forty minutes. I can literally feel my brain turning into mashed potatoes minute by minute.

To keep myself from crying out loud, I opened my notebook and decided to do what I do best: observe the absolute emptiness of my own afternoon.

The Teacher Gets a Taste of His Own Medicine

Honestly, it’s hilarious. Just last week, I stood on a stage at a big conference, looked out at the crowd, and proudly said: "In the smartphone era, we forgot how to be bored, and that is humanity's greatest loss." I talked about boredom as this beautiful space where great ideas are born.

Well, look at me now. My phone is put away because it looks bad to play games in front of the Dean, and I am finding out that my theories are only nice on paper. There are no great ideas being born here. The most interesting thing that happened in this meeting in the last hour was a fly that came through the window. I am staring at it fly in circles over my coworker's head, deeply jealous of its freedom.

Worse Than the Matrix

I look to my left. Dave, our data analyst, is typing numbers into a spreadsheet. His eyes look completely blank. I know exactly what he is thinking, because he told me yesterday during our coffee break: "There are moments when this Excel sheet looks like the Matrix to me, but in its least exciting version."

I try to use those smart meditation tricks—the ones that promise that if you know how to be bored without fear, you will find inner peace. I close my eyes. But instead of inner peace, the theme song of "PAW Patrol" starts playing on a loop inside my head. My kid watched it forty times this weekend. If I have to hear that song in my head one more time, I think I will lose my mind.

Saving My Energy

Desperate for a distraction, I slide my hand under the table, pull out my phone, and start doing the only thing left for a bored person to do. The line of speakers is so long that I’ve already managed to go through my entire contact list and delete people from elementary school. Just to feel like I am doing something.

Dave catches me out of the corner of his eye and passes me a little paper note, just like we used to do in high school: "You okay, Professor? You look totally dead."

I take my pen and write back to him: "I’m not bored, colleague. I’m just in a state of energy-saving mode."

"When people have nothing to do, their minds wander to the strangest places. Sometimes, that's where the magic happens. Other times, you just delete old phone numbers."

I look up again. The fly I was studying so closely for the last ten minutes takes one final turn around the ceiling light, finds the tiny crack in the window, and flies out into the fresh air. I sigh, watching it go. Even the fly on the wall got tired of me, it just left the room. And me? I am still sitting here, waiting for them to finish talking about the lunch menu.