Having Lecture with your Brother: As Told by an Older Sister

I just started my senior year of college, and life already feels like it is spinning out of control. How is it possible that I’ve only had a week and a half of school, and I am just barely getting my homework done? 

I use every single spare minute I have in between class and rehearsal (for a play) in an attempt to make progress, and still I feel rushed. I have to remind myself of the infamous Ferris Bueller’s Day Off line, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” 

I find that outside of my nightly rehearsals, going to lecture with my brother Grant is one of my stress relievers and favorite times of the week.  Grant and I have lecture together twice a week for an hour and fifteen minutes, it usually goes something like this: 

After scarfing down my lunch, due to the time constraints of not having much of a break in between classes, I make my way to Vilas 4070. The first thing I do when I enter the lecture hall is attempt to find my brother. But low and behold, where do I find him? None other than the second row from the front, center seat. I groan internally, maybe roll my eyes. Doesn’t Grant know that you never sit right up front in lecture? That’s just setting yourself up to get called on by the professor, also you have to crane your neck to see the projector. Oh well, I think. I make my way over, struggling to shuffle my way through the seats, because as I said, we are sitting in the center. By the time I make it to him I plop down into my seat. I look over at him and he is just smiling. “What?,” I ask him. He replies with a light hearted and sarcastic comment about how I look exhausted. I reply with an equally sarcastic, “Wow…thanks.” We usually tend to chat for a few minutes about what’s been going on in our lives. I realize that as he is speaking, everything he has mentioned up until this point has just been leisurely activities, such as hanging out with friends. I make a mental note to find at least one time this week to do the same. When lecture starts, our professor cracks a few dad jokes. I know that at any second, Grant is going to elbow me and gesture to his notebook. Sure enough, Grant has made a note about our Professor’s dad joke. Why, I think to myself, just why? He waits for me to smile and shake my head in an I-think-you-are-being-ridiculous-but-I’m-not-going-to-stop-you kind of way. About halfway through lecture I will be writing down notes, when Grant makes a sneak attack to defile my page with either a small doodle or an obscene word. I know he is attempting to get a rise out of me. I mean isn’t that what little brothers excel at? Knowing how to trigger their older sisters? I just roll my eyes at him. Towards the end of class, Grant starts to get antsy. This usually results in him making puns (bad ones I might add) out of whatever the professor just said. To Grant, everything is fair game when it comes to puns. If he had his say, I am sure he would crown himself ‘The King of Puns.’ We always walk out of lecture together, and I tend to get a fist bump as we part ways. I don’t know what the deal is with the fist bump, (might be a guy thing) but I do it anyways.  

I have realized that being in lecture with my brother is kind of like how a teenager feels when their parents do weird things in public: awkward, uncomfortable and most of the time you try to look somewhere else to disassociate that you are, indeed, their child. But, only because he is always trying to have fun and make jokes or tease me, which I love him for. I mean hey, someone has to tell me to lighten up when I find out that my previous lecture has assigned me hundreds of pages of reading. I guess that’s really what a brother does. Makes you laugh, especially when you are having a rough day.  

• class
• family
• siblings