Student freaks self out while daydreaming

Hans Olo, The Stool

While his mind wandered during a particularly dry Professional Responsibility class, Kevin McKiernan became legitimately “freaked.”

“I was sitting there thinking about that Seinfeld where Kramer put a screen door on his apartment, when it just kind of hit me that I could stand up on the desk and start screaming at the top of my lungs at that exact moment, and no one would stop me. At least not for a while – eventually the security people would come. Then I started thinking about what everyone would do, and how I would be so humiliated afterwards I would probably have to transfer to some community college law school like Hamline,” said McKiernan.

Although this type of idle fantasy generation is common, most people are able to snap themselves back to reality when they need to, says psychologist Chris Newhouse. “It’s common to create the possibility of disturbing or self-destructive behavior in one’s mind from time to time. The ‘what if?’ factor can be fun to toy with for many people, but if this kind of thinking becomes obsessive it can lead to a very acute social anxiety disorder.”

For McKiernan, his thoughts of humiliating himself in front of a class full of people began to snowball. “I started to get actually freaked out that I was going to do it. I had to really concentrate on paying attention to the prof and taking good notes just to take my mind off of it. I forgot about it after a little while, but it was creepy there for a few seconds.”