Nail torture against heavy eyelids.

Three-hour courses are available at the National University in Seoul normal. It sits in Gitte Zschoche Masterstudium often between chronically overtired students. Only a Viertelstündchen ... Shortly before she herself wegnickte, they learned the painful Hi-awake-trick.
  It is Monday morning, I sit in the main seminar and listen to the professor about Korean postwar poetry. I let my glance through the conference room of the Seoul National University roam. An absurd scene: half of my fellow students as wild type messages to mobile phones or preparing for other seminars. The other half asleep.
Gitte ZschochGitte Zschoche: Pickled roots, fish, eggs, acorn pudding - a meal!

The fact that students just doze off, in my seminars is not uncommon. There are several techniques: Some students cleverly fooled before, are hard to talk to listen to the professor. They bend over their notes, and firmly grip the pen, even though they have long dwell in other worlds. Striking is the absence of their mental maximum, if their state of Dösen to sleep on, and suddenly the head tilts forward. The jerky motion is awake, the Dösen start again until sleep again stronger.
Girls dawn favorite hair behind the curtain
Above all, the girls use their long hair to make it to the professor side deep into the face to hang. For example, their closed eyes and open mouths are obscured, which is pretending to sleep.

Other students do not even try, their mental absence to conceal - they lay their heads at the same provocative table. Some fellow students, including many prominent doctoral can also be a gentle snoring not resist. Only when such an obvious retreat from the seminar Done whisper and the other participants laugh sometimes behave.
The professor, who now and then interrupted his speech to a very complicated Chinese characters on the blackboard to draw, of course, completely ignored. It would be below his dignity, because the lessons of such a trifle to interrupt.
Many Koreans are chronically tired commuters
Whether on the bus, in the park, cafe or waiting room, at school and in university seminar - Koreans like to create a nap one. The hectic life in the mega-metropolis of Seoul, with its ten million inhabitants, leaving just traces. One reason for the collective fatigue on campus, many professors and students to commute several hours a day from the many millions of other cities around Seoul around the capital.
I was slightly shocked when I first time in a seminar with just 15 participants a fellow looked asleep. When I then politely asked whether this was in order because, I'm embarrassed offered several explanations to blame was the strenuous life full of obligations, not even at home could be properly and long enough to sleep. Or you had the night before completely through to prepare a presentation. Or maybe just too long to sing karaoke?
Especially when betagteren professors, often with boring teaching bored, it was also difficult for me, a three hour lecture without a break extent. Moreover, in my first semester at a Korean university at the beginning almost no word of instructive lecture understood.
Trick Ouch
So I am of the power of sleep, even in this infamous Monday seminar delivered almost hopeless. When I look back on the empty staple Notizzettel before me, I tear scared eyes, in order to stay awake.

It can not be that I am the honorable professor being so disrespectful to behave. Finally, he had at the last meeting brought some of his books, they signed and presented to me. Moreover, I feel a vague sense of responsibility - as the only foreigner in the room I am under special observation.
Frightened, I turn to my Kommilitonin, which has long sip of coffee, and under the table on her cell phone busy typing messages. It grabs my hand and shows me a trick: They pressed the thumb pointed fingernail on the skin just above the Nagelhäutchens on my little finger. Ouch, that really does hurt! For two minutes I'm awake again.
THE blog Korea, a divided country
From now on, I would destroy myself at short intervals one finger after another. I think bravely until the end of the meeting. Phew, my honor as a foreign student has been saved, my face is preserved. The fellow to jump, thanks to the professor, adopt it with a bow.
After he left the room, is living in the tired faces. Lot is in the cafeteria. A spicy stew for a second breakfast will be the last vestiges of sleep distribute.