6 Beneficial Things They Made You Stop Doing in School

#3. "Stop Fidgeting and Pay Attention!"

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You know that kid. Hell, there's a good chance you were that kid. The one who wouldn't sit still in class, constantly playing with whatever he happened to have lying on his desk. Give him a pencil and he'll start tapping it, shaking it, fidgeting with it until somebody screams at him. Then, five minutes later, he's at it again.

He, incidentally, is just doing what comes naturally ... and making himself healthier in the process.

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"This is my yoga."

Wait, What?

Children are, by design, active creatures who tend to repeat motions. Your average kid is characterized by bouts of bursting energy, then periods of rest. Hence, when forced to sit still or do monotonous activities for extended periods of time, fidgeting comes naturally to them. And since a fairly large chunk of your average school day consists of those exact elements, all those erasers and pencils are going to start looking really attractive in their eyes before long.

Now, we understand that the teachers get annoyed by this. Watching a classroom full of squirming, fidgeting children for an extended period of time would be enough to make Gandhi spin-kick a hole in a brick wall. But sadly, restricting this behavior is a huge dick move on teachers' part -- by doing so they will actually risk the very health of their students. Because fidgeting is what keeps you skinny. Seriously. And that's a big deal, when methods for fighting childhood obesity are the subject a raging debate worldwide.

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Fat kids: Sad or adorable?

Fidgeting, like all movement, burns calories. If you make a habit out of it, as in, learn to do it as a kid, it contributes heavily to something called non-exercise activity thermogenesis aka NEAT (see what they did there?). This is basically the amount of calories you burn just by going about your day. Fidgeting adds no fewer than 350 extra burned calories to this amount. That's the equivalent of a 30-minute run, without any extra work. Daily.

According to research, NEAT could actually be the very reason why some people are fat and some skinny; people with low NEAT rating tend to sit more still than those with a high one. See, that's the best thing in the NEAT scenario: The rating is thought to be modifiable in children, so they make a habit out of it. How? By encouraging fidgeting, that's how.

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If Jimmy here keeps being an asshole, he might just make it to 100.

The implications of this are mind-boggling: It is a possibility that within a couple of decades the whole Great American Weight Issue could be solved, or at least greatly diminished, if Mrs. Stevens could just stomach the fact that little Billy likes to play with his ruler.

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"You have two choices. Volleyball, or an hour of acting like hyperactive little bastards."

#2. "Stop Doodling and Pay Attention!"

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If you're an adult, you probably indulge in idle doodling whenever a notepad and a boring meeting collide. If you're a kid, it's every time there is a boring lecture. Many tens of millions of stick figures and band logos have made their way onto the printed page thanks to this. Then you got caught and your teacher showed the whole class that flying unicorn you had been idly crafting, to the amusement of everyone. Cue laughter, childhood trauma.

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"One day, I'll build a unicorn so huge it destroys them all!"

You can see why it would irritate the teacher so much; visible doodling is just short of falling asleep on the spectrum of ways to show somebody you're bored by what they're saying. But for the kid, it's usually not even a conscious thing -- you may hate drawing and you still find your hand automatically reaching for a pencil when things get really boring. That's exactly what makes it so offensive -- it is a visual cue of your involuntary zoning out, giving away the fact that the teacher has not captured your attention.

It's a bit unfair, really, because all you were doing was helping yourself concentrate on what the teacher was saying.

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Every page of dicks represents hard-won knowledge.

Wait, What?

Doodling is in fact the exact opposite of what people think. By preventing the brain from lapsing into a brainfart-coma during boring tasks such as, you know, lectures, it actually helps you concentrate a lot better than a non-doodler is able to.

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Another sociology student concentrates on the lecture.

So, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, doodling plays an important role in keeping you alert and preventing your fall into total daydream mode.

Hey, speaking of daydreaming ...

#1. "Stop Daydreaming!"

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What? This, too? Is science seriously trying to tell us that every time we zone out and inevitably start thinking about boobs -- only to get rudely dragged back to reality by our teacher -- we're actually doing something even remotely beneficial?

Well, what if we told you those idly imagined mind-boobs are one of the greatest problem solving tools your brain has?

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"There's a symphony of tits inside my head right now."

Wait, What?

Yes, of course it turns out daydreaming itself has its benefits too.

While daydreaming may seem to be procrastination of the highest degree, it can actually be extremely useful both as a thinking tool and stress relief. Which is just as well, seeing as we spend up to a third of our waking hours daydreaming.

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More, during math class.

You may be familiar with the fact that we only actively use a small fraction of our brain at any given moment. That's the part you use for, say, worrying about a difficult presentation or trying to figure out what the hell Teach is trying to say during class. That's also the part you use for thinking about all the random stuff that pops in your mind while daydreaming.

The thing is, underneath that surface you have a whole damn ocean of problem solvin' brain cells that sometimes just get annoyed by your surface thoughts and kindly draw your attention to that Saints Row 3 pre-order or, indeed, the ever popular boobs. That's what daydreaming is -- while you seem to be far away mentally, huge chunks of your brain are activated and problem solving like there ain't no tomorrow. This is why you'll hear people joke that they have some of their best ideas in the shower, or on the toilet. Sometimes solving a problem requires you to stop concentrating on solving the problem and letting your mind drift.

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He's planning his D&D campaign and curing AIDS right now.

Really, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to stop your mind from wandering because, if you think about it, bacon is like the best, isn't it and you know this building wouldn't be very secure in the event of a zombie attack and oh look that that stain on the floor is sort of shaped like Texas.

Pauli Poisuo is a member of the Wordplague writers community. Go say hi on their forums or take a peek at his blog.

For other ways your teachers have mislead you, check out 6 Books Everyone (Including Your English Teacher) Got Wrong and 6 Presidential Secrets Your History Teacher Didn't Mention.