You may see a student sleeping in class. I see an intricate set of independent actions working in concert to aid a student in her effort to sleep in class while giving the illusion of attention. The right arm has been raised a few inches by a stack of textbooks, thus lifting her right shoulder. As the left hand pushes her head to the right, the right shoulder is there to act as both a pillow for comfort and a kickstand to prevent her head from toppling onto the desk with an embarrassing thud. Her legs are apart, equally distributing her dead weight to keep her from falling. If her torso was leaned further forward, her legs would be crossed and tucked back beneath the seat to counterbalance the intensity of her slouch.

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The technique of a future Hall of Famer.

But of course, the entire illusion would be rendered useless if not for her immaculate positioning behind another student. The girl in yellow has just enough slouch to be ducked behind the girl in red far enough to become an outline of an attentive teen when seen from the teacher's point of view. As long as the girl in yellow doesn't snore or have a dream where she's falling and suddenly jolt awake in an embarrassing panic, by the end of class she'll have cultivated enough energy to walk to her next class so she can fall asleep there, too.

The foundation of many slacker techniques stems from seat positioning, so all the best slackers always know how to ...

There's a mathematical brilliance to choosing a classroom seat that will ensure a long school year of generally being left alone. Let's look at it through a classic classroom configuration, where the teacher is in front of the chalkboard and the students are amassed in rows facing the teacher.

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What do you think is the best seat for slacking in the picture above?

Nope. You're all wrong. It's the third seat in the middle row. No, not the girl in black propping her head with her hand. In that picture there's someone between her and the guy in the red long-sleeve shirt. Look at this ninja's baby blue elbows.

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Ah-ha! You can't hide from me, classroom ninja!

Hidden in plain sight is a person in the middle of the class, ducked behind a tall, broad-shouldered person. That's a stock photo, but that kid's natural instinct to go unnoticed kicked in when he entered the classroom and camouflaged himself as a hazy, half-remembered dream from long ago that you can't quite grasp the detail of. He only exists in the corner of your eye, and there is nothing when you turn to look. He is a phantasm of another life, only flickering into existence when candles are lit and words of the elder ones are chanted. That kid's sneak skill tree must be nuts.

With great coverage, any student can dissolve into vapor and become a phantom that exists in a state of both there and not there simultaneously. But sometimes, a high school slacker doesn't want to be there at all. That's why someone skilled in the art of the slack must ...

The similarities between skipping class and breaking out of a maximum security prison full of murderers and rapists are shocking. Both have roughly the same degree of planning and on-the-spot improvisation. To be executed well, both need a certain degree of knowledge on how the building and its workers function day to day. Planning routes, establishing meeting points, learning security guard schedules, obtaining documents that excuse an absence, knowing the right people who can get you into safe havens -- it's Ocean's Eleven with acne and uncontrollable boners.

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And none of the handsomeness.

I didn't cut class much in high school, and when I did, I felt like an asshole, like I had crossed a line. That being said, my friends and I were goddamn great at it. I assume that's the same internal conflict a career criminal must feel during quiet, contemplative moments while wearing a Nixon mask in a van on the way to a bank robbery.

My friends and I used to wander around campus with fake orders from a frazzled, overworked teacher. She would routinely ask us to complete errands for her around school, so if we ever wanted a period or two off, we told people we were doing something for her. The much more convenient option was to simply walk out of her classroom through a door that led directly to the outside -- a door put there by a designer who couldn't imagine a reason kids wouldn't want to be in school. It's the stupidest door I've ever seen, and I've seen so many doors, man.

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Door.

For some friends who went to another high school, the prison escape analogy I mentioned above was extremely fitting, as their school was designed more like something out of an episode of Prison Break than Degrassi Senior High. If they wanted to cut class, they had to scale a tall fence that was patrolled by school security guards. If they made it past the fence, they were greeted with a 100-yard open field that separated them from freedom. The fences might as well have had sniper towers.

Some kids apply more effort into getting out of class than they ever put in when they're in class. But that's all right, because there's also an art to counterbalancing a slacker reputation ...