The students' end-of-semester evaluations confirmed a hunch that I had-surprisingly, the students claimed to have both enjoyed and learned quite a lot from that particular lecture. All I could think to do was to laugh along and say, “Well, I can't compete with that!” What could I do? New instructor orientations rarely cover what to do in the event of a gorilla invasion. And then again, fifteen minutes after that, as a group of Spaniards from Pamplona, complete with red kerchiefs, running from the bulls-or cows, in this instance (it was Wisconsin, after all). That is, until ten minutes later, when the same group of students again stormed the auditorium, this time dressed as bowling pins being chased by a giant bowling ball. Once it became clear that the incident was an innocent Halloween prank, we all had our laughs and eventually got back down to business. Needless to say, it was quite a shock to everyone in the hall, myself included. Nothing about the scenario was unusual, until about ten minutes into the lecture, when a group of eight students stormed the classroom from the back of the hall, all dressed for Halloween as bananas, being chased by a student in a gorilla costume! They whooped and hollered as they came down the aisles, performed a staged slapstick routine for a few seconds, and then dashed out the emergency exit, stage right. In that cavernous lecture hall, I remember witnessing the usual diversity of student behavior: some frantically duplicating every word from my PowerPoint slides, some staring blankly into space, and others on the brink of dozing off as I nervously delivered a decidedly uninspiring overview of post-Soviet politics. My first large university lecture experience was unforgettable: a lowly TA stand-in for an introductory class of 400-on Halloween, no less.
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