Last week, during an English lesson on Saturday morning, my teacher mentioned his greatest dream, which actually had me surprised as I would never have imagined such a desire would exist. Basically, my teacher expressed his wish to break the world record for the longest lesson ever set, which took place in Bangalore, India, in 2008 and lasted seventy-eight hours and three minutes.
The lecture, which was organized by Kathiravan M. Pethi along with thirty-six students, was called “Mahatma Gandhi’s Vision and Mission in Life”. The aim of that Guinness record was for the students to raise funds for foundations which help economically disadvantaged students by getting them jobs and providing them with free people skills training.
All thirty-six students had been learning yoga, meditation and watching their diet so no problems would occur during the lecture. Apart from the Guinness World Records representative, doctors and lawyers had to be present as well, since if one student fell asleep, the whole plan would fail. Of course, these three days without any sleep left all of the students worn out and most of them started hallucinating and blacking out, because they were also not allowed to stop talking for more that thirty seconds at a time. However, their team spirit must have sustained them, since no student quit and they all managed to set a remarkable world record.
While doing some research on that dream of my teacher’s, I was fascinated, but on reconsidering the idea I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to participate in such a dangerous experiment, and obviously why my teacher would wish to break such a record. This is why, when I was asked if I would like to take part in my teacher’s long-lasting lecture, I expressed my disagreement without any hesitation!
Alexandra Dermetzopoulou
Advanced Class – Dilou School
