I’ve just woken up! The clock says the time is 10:00.

I’m still lying on the bed, negotiating whether I should wake up or not, when the WhatsApp message from our lecturer, Ms Miller, pops up on the screen of my phone. She’s not feeling well, she says. The class is cancelled.

The class was supposed to be this afternoon at 2 o’clock at the Arts Department. At first, I’m sad that the class has been cancelled. I mean, I wanted to meet Ms Miller after class to discuss my thesis. We are presenting next week and I haven’t started. Ms Miller had said she’d bring me some sources to look through to see if there’s anything I find interesting that I can research. Now the class is cancelled – but I can always send her an email.

All in all, however, I’m really thrilled that the class has been cancelled. The Arts Department is on the other side of campus, by the new residences – it’s far! One thing I’m definitely not looking forward to doing, especially in this cold weather, is walk all the way to the Arts Department. To make matters worse, the class is 3 bloody hours long… Do you know what that means?

3 hours is such a long time. There are a lot of things you can do with 3 hours. You can get bored. You can sit in one chair until your backside tastes sore. You can yawn, at least twenty times until you fall asleep like my classmate, Gerben Van Zyl, always does. See, 3 hours is a long time to sit in one place and do nothing!

Once in a blue moon Ms Miller brings with her a movie for us to watch in class – hoping that at least the movie will keep us awake. A few weeks back, we were watching A Tale of Two Sisters, the lights in the lecture room were off. Gerben was sitting on one of the tables at the back of the class, snoring without any care in the world. The couple behind me, John and Aphiwe, were fidgeting; moving each other’s chairs close to each other so that they could hold hands beneath the desk. See, there are a lot of things you can do with 3 hours.

Now, I’m sitting here wondering what to do with the 3 hours, since the class is cancelled. The sensible part of me tells me that watching Alfred Hitchcock’s The Great Dictator is the best thing I can do for myself. I had taken the film from Ms Miller the previous week and she expects me to write a short review on it. The other part of me, the one that is not so sensible, says: “To hell with schoolwork. Do something else.”

I look around the room. My eyes fall on the laptop, it sits there on my study desk, tempting me to come closer and have a look on what’s happening on Facebook and Twitter. I stand up. On my way there, I pick up Niq Mhlongo’s book Dog Eat Dog – I had taken it out at the Sasol Library last week and only read a few pages of it.

I open it, from where I left of on page 78. I read. The next thing I know is that it’s getting dark. I check the clock it’s almost half-past-four. How quick time does fly when you are having fun and reading a good book. I can’t believe 6 hours have gone!

My stomach groans and I remember that I haven’t eating anything today.

ZZ xx