Sometimes listening is just not enough

The Best Part of Today #121:

Discreet distractors.

It has reached that part of the semester at which point final projects and presentations are beginning to flood my classes. I had to observe upwards of 6 presentations just today and butt and brain both were starting to go numb. I firmly believe that I can do something else while to music or to someone speak. That is why, even though I love classical music, I generally avoid classical music concerts because I feel I need something else to do while listening, which is of course considered very rude. I used to play my gameboy at some of them when I was younger, and attracted many disapproving glares, and graduated to reading books. This is slightly more difficult when the concert hall is dark and it is difficult to see the pages, but it attracts fewer haughty stink-eyes.

This sort of thing is considered even more disrespectful in class, and something to the extent of diverting oneself with an electronic device, or even something non-electronic like a book, is absolutely unacceptable. I'd say doodling is pushing the envelope a little, as your professor may glare at you if he or she realizes you are not just taking dedicated notes. The perfect medium here is jewelry or other accoutrements that you can use to occupy yourself without looking distracted or distracting. For me, it was my relay for life anklet. I mentioned in an earlier post that I got a bracelet for donating a dollar to relay for life, to which I added a colored bead for each time I walked around the track. During class today I amused myself by pushing the beads around the bracelet into different formations and just back and forth, kind of like a mini abacus. Call me crazy, but it helped pass the time because it was better than just sitting and blankly staring at my classmates. No offense to their presentations and hard work and everything, but we all know that class presentations aren't really anyone's favorite things to sit through, so I'm sure you can all relate.

Things that also fall into this category are those fancy watches with spinning dials on the face, or rings with with moving parts. I myself have two rings that are fun to play with: one is a steampunky little thing with gears and a spinning hand kind of like a compass. The other is actually a miniature box with a little latch that my friends joke I could use to surreptitiously poison someone's drink. I was also wearing my fork bracelet today and resorted to taking that on and off occasionally.

Any other things you guys use to keep yourself politely occupied?