The Art of Seat Selection

I made an observation today that surprised me a bit. As I walked into the classroom for my modern and contemporary drama class I glanced around the room at the desks which had been assembled into a large circle, as usual. I saw an empty seat on the far side of the circle and headed toward it. I stopped suddenly and changed my mind, even now I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe I saw someone I didn't want to sit by or maybe the desks next to it were too close, but for whatever reason I walked to an empty desk on the opposite side of the circle. The seat to the right of mine had a back pack in it and I couldn't tell if it belonged to a boy or a girl. Though it didn't really matter I hoped it was a boy's bag and looked to see who occupied the seat to the left. It was a girl I had noticed in previous meetings of this class and had marked as my nemesis.

There is no logical reason for my marking her this way but my explanation is that on the second day of class she told the class that she was a dramaturgy major (a type of theater studies). This raised some sort of red flag in my brain. I LOVE theater. It is my passion and a large part of my soul wants to be a theater major myslef, so I have noticed a certain degree of jealousy and even resentment toward theater majors. I feel this way because I have been conditioned to believe being a theater major would not provide me with marketable career skils, so I am too afriad to be a theater major and it makes me sad sometimes. Once I noticed that I would be siting next to this girl my gut reaction was of course to choose another seat away from her, but I was too close. It would be obvious that I didn't want to sit next to her. So I pressed on and put my back pack on the desk, claiming the seat as mine.

As I took off my gloves, turned off my iPod, carefully wound the headphones around it and proceeded to unpack my things I thought about my choice of seat. It was a good decision to sit next to her, I concluded. Strategic really. It helped conceal my nemesitc feelings toward her, a sort of keep your enemies closer philosophy. Plus by sitting next to her I wouldn't be temped to shoot eye daggers at her accross the circle, in fact I wouldn't have to look at her at all. After analyzing my choice I came to the conclusion that I had made the perfect choice in seat selection. What an odd thing to think about! But seriously, how many of us do that all the time? There are a lot of politics involved in selecting a seat in a classroom, meeting room, or lunchroom. It's not just about avoiding the guy with B.O. or the leg twitcher who rests her foot on the leg of your desk; it can be a strategic choice for lulling your arch nemesis into a false sense of security.