It looks like I pay attention in class. It's something I've mastered as a reflexive defensive tactic in high school, where I noticed my AP World History teacher wouldn't call on me to answer a question if I was looking him right in the eyes when he lectured. Sure it sounds like that could be by chance, but I ran many tests during many a lecture. It wasn't the most scientific of studies, but I did have tally marks in the margins of my notes on the Phoenicians that would back me up.
I was saved from answering many a question, and instead it would deflect to the sad swine who didn't pick up on this trick. Though, this might have ruined me for other teachers. Some teachers see your direct eye contact and think "Ooh goody! I can call on her because she is obviously paying attention!" So the beginning of every semester has a lot of reconnaissance to go through.
So goes my Features Writing class, where the professor was reading a very well-written feature, stopping every so often to talk about its amazingness (he didn't write it by the way), and he would look, right at you, pause, and ask a question. It took me a second to realize that these questions were actually posed for the whole room, but for that split, hairline of time, I was truly perturbed by the direct, unflinching attention of his gaze. He was telling me to look up fungible, and when I immediately leaned toward my desktop and had my hand on my mouse, the two girls next to me burst into laughter. They wanted to know if I was really going to look it up seeing as I latched onto my mouse so quickly. Clearly they were jealous of my 1) eagerness to learn and my 2) voracity to answer a question. Of course.
Worst of it was, one of the laughing girls found the answer before me. Shucks.
