The most clever thing I ever saw a college professor do. I had to take some upper level Psychology course at San Diego State University. I remember that even the title was extremely boring. And it was the only course left at 4:00 p.m. twice a week for 90 minutes at a time. On the first day, it was clear that many people also needed it as a requirement and probably 50 people showed up. As the teacher coldly jumped right into the subject for 90 minutes of the most boring statistics and analysis of psychological data, the class looked overwhelmed and exasperated that they were going to have to put up with this, in this manner for an entire semester. Just like everybody else, I highly questioned whether I wanted to return to this particular class and maybe it might be better to try again next semester with a different teacher. I had no choice though, I needed to get it out of the way now. When I showed up later that week for the second session, it became apparent that the teacher had scared 35 people away from taking this class. Only 15 had returned. Before the teacher came in, the remaining students were complaining to each other about what a drag this situation was. The teacher walked in and said, "Everybody--move these chairs into a circle." He announced that we were going to play some role-playing games this whole period. The session was the complete opposite of what we had experienced earlier in the week. It was fun, interactive, jovial and everybody had a great time. As a matter of fact, from that point on, every time we met we were in a circle, engaged in entertaining, stimulating, activities without ever using the textbook or even taking tests. It became apparent what the professor had done. He made his life easier by cutting down his work load from 50 students to just 15 by letting the majority of students decide for themselves that they did not want to take his class at 4:00 p.m.