I'm sooooo very bored in class

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I'm currently attending my college classes and I'm so very bored, to the point where I'm constantly yawning, my eyes are fighting to remain open, and I'm starting to tear. I also have pervasive feelings of "I really REALLY don't want to be here.". On top of that, I can understand my teachers when they speak but I can't understand some of the more complex things (Or so it seems) my peers say, so I have to speculate as to what they mean by picking out key words and start asking questions.

Also, I'm pretty sure I freaked out one of the girls in my Biology class when I started laughing when another team member said she was taking two measurements (Only one was needed). At first, she laughed in agreement but then she seemed to become uncomfortable when, I'm guessing, I laughed in an unusual way.

Is this characteristic of a certain pathology? Or is it just giftedness compounded with language processing problems?

Are these classes powerpoint classes, like the professor drones on about some sh***y cartoony slides for 60 minutes? Those are the boringest possible experiences. I can't pay attention in those classes. The better classes are the ones with the professors snorting chalkdust as they fill up nine boards with surprisingly legible scrawlings. Those I can learn something in.

I think the associated pathology is "It's boring to listen to people drone on about sh***y slides, why can't I just read about this and learn it on my own" syndrome.

Also, maybe sleep deprivation and circadian clock. Perhaps an afternoon power nap?

Do you have auditory processing problems? I do; and I have over the years resigned myself to the fact that I learn very little from lectures. Almost all my learning is done on my own, from the textbook or from the notes I put down during lectures.

Try a more visual- and text-based approach. Go to class to get the notes down; don't worry about understanding anything, just write down what you'll want to study later. Learn from the textbook and from the homework, and maybe from your own research on the concepts.

It also helps to have a cup of coffee before class. I used to do this a lot before I started taking ADHD meds, and even with the meds I still drink coffee during particularly boring classes (my profs don't have a problem with our bringing a cup of coffee to class).

I don't know if you are an autodidact like me, but a lot of people with AS are. We like to learn, and we do it on our own for the most part--often to the point that we have trouble learning from others. It can be a handicap in the organized educational system. This tendency isn't really related to academic skill. It's just that some people learn better on their own, or better from a book than a lecture, or better from doing it firsthand.

Try a few lectures just getting the notes and not worrying about understanding, and doing the actual learning later on. Maybe that will help. Later on maybe you can try learning the material ahead of time, before the lecture--I'm doing this now with my easier classes and it really seems to help. If you stay somewhat ahead of the class, you can predict a little bit what the prof is going to say, and that makes it easier on your iffy auditory processing.

Oh, and make sure you're sitting near the front. The fewer distractions, the better. You can also try watching the prof's lips--for some people, that helps, even if they don't outright read lips, because it reinforces the words they sometimes take longer to interpret.

I sympathise, but I don't have any advice apart from minimising lecture attendance, and possibly taking along a music player with earphones, and/or sitting at the back and getting on with something more interesting. You could try recording what the lecturer says and making a transcript of it later, but unless you can get the microphone close to the lecturer's mouth, the word-clarity might not be great.

I get almost nothing from letting a person drone on at me for an hour. It's torture to even try. I couldn't understand why anybody bothered with lectures at all until I discovered AS and realised that NTs could somehow get useful information out of a lecture.

One way might be to read up on the subject beforehand. It might ease the anxiety of the situation, though of course if you already know the material, attending the lecture would become almost pointless, except to satisfy some bureaucratic rule.

I got very bored in high school and college for that very reason. There was always that instructor standing at the front of the class, giving a power point lecture. The difference is that when I was in high school and college, it was all done with an overhead projector instead of a computer and everything was all in black and white. I had to read my textbooks afterwards in order to get what the guest speakers were talking about.

An additional method, to be experimented with, is to sit in the back of the classroom and to try to both pay attention to the lecture and watch people's facial expressions kind of like a poker player might. How many of your fellow students are getting it and what are they confused on? And then try and be a positive, low-key leader.

I can't imagine why.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP0mQeLWCCo[/youtube]

How do you know she was uncomfortable? She could have been just as bored with the class as you. I wouldn't worry about these guesses. It's far better to just be confident. Confident people tend to go far in life no matter how "weird" others perceive them.