A handy guide compiled for you by Analiese Jackson

Ahh, lectures. The two to three hours where you pay for someone to talk at you while you feel little parts of your soul slowly dying. They’re also reasonably important to attend and will help you pass your papers and, at $500 a pop, you really want to pass these the first time round.

However, University is all about learning life skills. One of the major things you need to learn very early on in your degree is that there’s an art to selecting where abouts in the lecture theatre you are going to position yourself. This is a crucial decision that MUST be made in the first lecture because chances are that, one they’ve secured the best seats, your cohort are highly unlikely to change seats over the duration of the semester. In order to help you pick the best seat for you, I’ve supplied you with a few helpful tips in successful seat acquisition:

Don’t sit in the back row if you’re not hung-over, late or in need of a nap: These seats are usually frequented by those students who are either consistently late to lecturers or are too hung-over from the previous night to be able to handle the light coming from the PowerPoint Projector. You need to be considerate of these people, because one day it could be you.

Don’t sit in the front row unless you are a mature student or a teachers pet: The first few rows are reserved for overzealous students. If you’re unable to get any other seat, be careful as there’s a serious chance that you could get an eye poked out by the sheer velocity of nerdy students hand shooting up to answer a question (“OOOOooooo I know! I Know!  Really, I KNOW!! PICK MEEEEEEE!! PLEASE, VALIDATE MY EXISTENCE!!!”). This is a terrible OSH risk and should really be looked into by the University

Don’t sit in the middle, unless you want your lecturer to acknowledge you: This is within direct eye line of your lecturer, so if you want to pick up Satellite and have a quick read during class, you will either have to do it super stealthily or not at all. We recommend hiding it in course guides or over-sized novelty ring-binders (you can probably borrow one from someone down the front. Just be careful not to ruin their colour coded notes).

If you’re in a lecture theatre like AT2 or SC2, don’t sit on the sides:  otherwise, you will constantly have people mumbling “Excuse me” at you throughout your lecture. Inevitably, the person next to you will have some sort of bladder problem and, like being on an aeroplane, they will have to climb over your lap to get to the bathrooms. Unless you enjoy being climbed over and enjoy copious amounts of physical contact from strangers.

Exemption: During a test or exam, the side seat is perfect so that you can run away early. ALWAYS get the side seat during this time; otherwise if you finish early, you’re stuck in the middle until the guy who writes reeeeeaaaallly slooooooowllly decides to finish right on the bell.

The ideal seat for sitting in during your lecture is somewhat in the middle, off to one side of the lecturer so that you’re out of his or her eye line, but not on the very end of the row so that you’ll be climbed over for three hours straight.

Good luck!