How To Sleep Through Geometry Class

And still ace the final exam! (A true story)

A hundred years ago, back when I was a student in the American educational system, I was pretty stupid. At least that is the opinion one would formulate upon reviewing my scholastic record. I was certainly not an “A” student. I graduated from high school in the bottom half of the 783 students in that graduating class. I was technically below average. If you asked my parents about my intelligence they would have told you that I was mentally challenged and doomed to a life of menial jobs. And that was their primary argument for categorically refusing to pay for a college education for me.

My mother said, “Listen, we can only afford to send one of you kids to college and your brother was a straight A student while your grades are in the bottom half. This proves beyond a shadow of doubt that he is smarter than you. Do you know how much college costs? If we’re gonna invest that kind of money we’re gonna invest it in the best chance of success.”

My father said, “Get a job with the phone company or the electric company or the railroad. Get with some big company so you can earn a pension. Or better yet, learn how to be a plumber. Those guys earn a boatload of money.”

I would have laughed if I were not deeply offended. Who were these parents of mine? Did they not have a clue to who I was? I had lived in the same bedroom as my older brother for sixteen freaking years. There was no doubt in my mind that I was about forty times smarter than he was. Sure, he made better grades than I did but that is only because he did everything exactly as he was told. He was a fucking robot! He dutifully climbed up every ladder placed before him and he got really good grades because he was a total nerd/geek who spent countless hours memorizing things. But he could not think for himself!

I, on the other hand, was a rebel. I rebelled against every single thing placed before me. I was not interested in memorizing facts. I was not hopelessly stuck in the left-half of my brain. I questioned everything and I rebelled against everything and I argued about everything and I disagreed with everything and I lived in the woo-woo portion of my brain. So I ended up paying for my own college — as long as I was able to.

But I’m getting ahead of myself! Let me go back to high school (and it pains me to type those words).

In my junior year in high school I took Geometry. My Geometry class was during 5th period — right after lunch. At the time I not only went to school full-time but I also worked full-time at a part-time job after school. To clarify, it was supposed to be a part-time job but I was working a little over forty hours per week. And if that was not enough, I was also partying full-time. I was drinking a lot of alcohol and smoking a lot of pot. And if that was not enough I was also chasing girls like there was no tomorrow. I was disgusting.

I never seemed to get enough sleep. Fifth period, right after lunch, seemed like the perfect time to catch a little nap.

The fifth period geometry teacher was named, Mr. Arnold. I used to know his first name but it was so freaking long ago that I can’t remember it. There were two defining characteristics of Mr. Arnold, the first of which was the fact that he was constantly popping and sucking on Wintergreen Lifesavers. You could smell the wintergreen from twenty paces. I later learned that this wintergreen habit of his was a result of the fact that teachers were not allowed to smoke in class and he turned out to be a two-pack a day smoker who could only get through a day of school through his Wintergreen Lifesaver addiction.

His other defining characteristic is that he had a horrendously, boring and monotone voice that would put the most alert student to sleep. His voice was the perfect cure for insomnia (whatever that is). There was simply no inflection in his voice, no modulation in tone nor emphasis. He spoke like a robot. He made the late Stephen Hawking sound like an opera singer.

And the whole time he was lecturing he was sucking on and chewing Wintergreen Lifesavers.

Coming into Geometry class after lunch I was exhausted and ready for a nap. I would open my geometry book on my desk and then try to listen to his lecture for the day. After only about five minutes of his monotone voice I could barely keep my eyes open. Before I knew it, my head fell down onto my geometry book and I was sound asleep.

I simply could not help it.

At the very beginning of the year Mr. Arnold laid out his procedure for grading us. Every week he would lecture us each day Monday through Thursday. After each lecture we would be given a short homework assignment over what he covered in that day’s lecture. He did not grade the homework but simply gave us an A if we turned it in and an F if we did not. Then on Friday, the fifth day, he would give a written test on everything that he had lectured on during the week. Then, at the end of the six-weeks period he would give us a big test over everything he lectured on during the period. Our overall grade for the period would be determined by taking an average of three things; the average of our homework assignments, the average of our weekly tests, and the final score on our period tests. He challenged us into mathematical thinking by telling us that as long as we turned our homework in every day there was no way we could fail.

Well, I fell asleep every single day in his class and I never turned in a single homework assignment. To my utter astonishment, I made an A on every single one of his weekly tests as well as his period tests. Those two A’s, combined with my F for not turning in any homework averaged out to a B for the period! I was doing pretty well!

Not surprisingly, Mr. Arnold grew quite suspicious. He was convinced that I was cheating. How could I sleep through every one of his classes yet score so high on all his tests?

I was as surprised as he was.

One day he held me back after class. He wanted to talk to me. With no one else in the classroom he looked at me and said, “I know you’re cheating. I won’t put up with it any more and furthermore I want to know how you’re doing it. You sleep through every one of my classes yet you ace every test. How are you doing it?”

“Seriously, Mr. Arnold, I don’t know how. The tests just seem so… easy. I swear I’m not cheating.”

“So how the heck can you sleep through my classes yet know the answers on the tests?”

“Uh… well… uh… I don’t know! I’m sorry but I just can’t help falling asleep during your lectures.”

Mr. Arnold popped a Wintergreen Lifesaver into his mouth, “Oh really? Why is that?”

“Well, uh… well… uh… it’s just that you have such a monotone, hypnotic voice. It just puts me to sleep. Seriously, it’s impossible to stay awake once you start talking.”

Mr. Arnold started biting down on the Lifesaver in his mouth, “Oh really? Is that so? So you don’t hear my lectures and you don’t turn in any of your homework and you obviously never read your textbook yet you ace all the tests?”

“Uh… well… uh… yeah, I guess so. I really can’t explain it. I’m okay as long as I don’t listen to your lectures or read the textbook. I remember the first couple of weeks of your course I desperately tried to stay awake and I read the chapters and I did the homework and I just barely passed the test. Once I stopped reading the textbook and stopped listening to you lecture then suddenly the tests got so much easier. I mean I read the questions on the test and the answers just seemed so much easier. It was ridiculously easy — but only as long as I slept through your class and didn’t listen to you.”

Mr. Arnold’s face turned stone cold. He did not move a facial muscle for a very, very long minute. He finally swallowed the bits of Wintergreen Lifesaver in his mouth and immediately popped another one into his mouth, “So you say my voice is… uh… hypnotizing?”

“Well… uh… yeah. I’m sorry, but it is. Seriously, it is practically impossible to stay awake when you are lecturing.” I felt doomed.

“And you don’t read the textbook or study for tests?”

“Oh, god no. That would only confuse me.”

“So you only sleep through my lectures then ace all the tests?”

“Yes, yes… I swear I’m not cheating. It’s just so easy as long as I don’t listen to you or study.”

“And it’s all because of my dull, monotonous, hypnotizing voice?”

“Uh… well… uh, yeah.”

Mr. Arnold popped another Wintergreen Lifesaver into his mouth then began pacing in a circle around his desk. I grew more nervous with each passing around of his desk. I felt I was about to be kicked out of his class and be failed in geometry.

Mr. Arnold suddenly stopped pacing around his desk and he stopped sucking on his Lifesaver as he looked me in the eye, “Okay, this is what we are going to do. We are going to forget this conversation ever took place. We are going to forget that you sleep through every one of my classes. We are going to forget that I have a dull, hypnotizing, monotonous voice. We’re going to… we’re going to just forget it all. You’re going to keep sleeping through my classes and as long as you keep acing all the tests everything will be just fine. But as soon as you screw up you’re toast!”

Utterly stunned, I nodded and left the classroom. For the rest of the year I continued to sleep in Mr. Arnold’s geometry class and I continued to make an A on all the weekly and period tests and on the final exam I scored the second highest of all 126 students in all of his five geometry classes. If it wasn’t for geometry I would have scored even lower in my graduating class.

The next year I took algebra and the teacher would not let me sleep in her class. I just barely passed with a D-.

Later in life I learned about some of the principles of hypnosis. I wondered if I learned geometry because the hypnotic voice of Mr. Arnold put me in a state of hypnosis while sleeping on my geometry textbook on my desk. It actually made some sense to me. I suddenly wished I had slept through more of high school.

But through some personal experiences later in life I also began wondering if my success in geometry may not have also been due to the fact that while I was sleeping, presumably in a hypnotic state, I was also sleeping ATOP MY GEOMETRY TEXTBOOK!

You see, I have learned that it is possible to read a book — or at least parts of a book — from simply sleeping on and with that book. (I’ll have to tell those stories some day.)

I realize that this notion sounds utterly blasphemous to everything that we have ever been taught. To the critical thinking which we have been taught to believe is the only true form of thinking, this is pure woo-woo bullshit. While hypnosis might have a modicum of believability to the left-brain thinker, reading a book while sleeping on it is pure horseshit. It is downright unacceptable. It falls into the realm of new agey, metaphysical caca.

But now, hundreds of years later, I can only wonder if my success in geometry was not only due to the hypnosis of my geometry teacher but also to the fact that I took an afternoon nap each weekday on my geometry textbook.

Over the course of my long life I have experienced numerous occasions when I read text from a book, not by reading the text with my eyeballs and left-brain noggin, but by physically sleeping on the book. I have literally put a book under my pillow before going to sleep and awakened the next morning with a core understanding of one of the key messages in the book. And then I would actually read the book and then get a secondary powerful reiteration of that understanding. This has always freaked me out but it has also greatly enhanced my understanding of what was written. It is one of my favorite ways to read a book.

Before cracking a book open, SLEEP ON IT!

We can do a whole different kind of reading when we are asleep than we can while we are awake stuck in the left-half of our brain. Try it some time! The critical thinking left-brain can actually be an impediment to learning. Hypnosis and sleep-reading takes us out of our reasoning left-half of our brain and puts us in a much bigger, more open state. This allows us to see more, feel more and understand more. When we read from a state of being ‘awake’ we read from a very narrow spectrum of absorbance. When asleep all our barriers are down and we experience and take in so much more.

Never read a book until after you have slept with it. That’s my weirdo advice.

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.