“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” – BILL GATES
Let’s be honest: every classroom is a miniature society, and the back row is its own mysterious ecosystem. While the people sitting in front are busy scribbling down notes, or trying hard to keep out of the teacher’s radar, the backbenchers are there and they do not care.
Firstly, if you don’t know who these elusive, entertaining students are: backbenchers are the students who, by some unspoken law, are magnetically drawn to the last row of desks. Teachers often mistake them for inattentive, but in reality, they’re just practicing advanced forms of multitasking—like doodling, daydreaming, and inventing new ways to look busy.
Backbenchers have perfected the art of learning by osmosis. While appearing to be miles away mentally, they’re actually absorbing information through a complex process known as “selective attention”—which is science-speak for “I’ll remember it if I think it’s important.”
Why memorize the entire textbook when you can figure out which chapters the teacher actually cares about? Backbenchers are efficiency experts, always looking for the shortest distance between “assignment given” and “assignment submitted.”
Backbenchers often resist conforming to the rigid expectations of the classroom. This distance from the teacher’s gaze allows them to observe, question, and form independent opinions. Their physical and psychological detachment from the front rows fosters creativity and out-of-the-box thinking – usually expressed in crazy ideas or creative excuses to tell the teacher about incomplete homework.
They’re used to winging it, which, let’s face it, is a crucial life skill. When life throws a curveball, they’re not the ones frantically searching for the syllabus—they’re the ones already halfway to a solution.
So, the next time you see a cluster of students at the back of the classroom, don’t write them off as slackers. They might just be the future CEOs, inventors, or stand-up comedians of the world— after all, a lot of famous people were what you would consider backbenchers back in the day! Think Anand Mahindra, Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, or even the late A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, former President of India and a renowned scientist, who once said, “The best brains of the nation may be found on the last benches of the classroom.” It doesn’t matter where they sit in class, or how they behave (to an extent), but the way they think, and the way they handle things!
September, 2025
