Does anyone else miss college classes?

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Soomie
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14 Nov 2012, 12:41 pm

So, all of my classes are in the morning and I have to walk thirty minutes to class, which requires waking up super early. I usually go to my first class on monday, because it's an important class. After that class there's an hour break until the next one, and then there's a two hour break after that one. Instead of sitting around on campus for three hours with nothing to do, I usually just walk back home and relax and just don't go to the other two. I only have philosophy on tuesday/thursday, and the professor grades on attendance, but I hate that class. I don't like his teaching style, because he just writes 3 page word documents and reads them to us. I can do that at home. Anyway, I just see those classes as a waste of time when I could be doing other things that interest me, or cleaning my living space or something. I thought in college you were supposed to be an adult, not have other adults coddle you and punish you if you stay home. If I'm doing well, why does it matter? All throughout school I have made mostly A's and B's (I think I have only pulled one C and one D, and I have never failed a class) with minimum effort. I don't see why that should change...

Sorry if I'm rambling, but does anyone else have this problem with college?



littlelily613
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14 Nov 2012, 12:57 pm

As much as I hated waiting around, I always did. I honestly cannot understand why people pay so much for an education, and don't take full advantage of the opportunity.


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Soomie
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14 Nov 2012, 1:04 pm

Well, for one I don't think education should cost nearly as much as it does or anything at all, but that's another story. Two, I'm being forced to take classes that don't even count towards my major because that's all that was left after signup. If I were taking major classes like last year, I would actually be interested and more motivated.



littlelily613
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14 Nov 2012, 1:30 pm

I don't believe education should cost anything period, but the reality is that it does. The point of an undergraduate education is to have a broad education encompassing many things, with a specific focus as well (Masters and beyond is for narrowing it down even further). The classes must be taken, and so I guess I just believe that the opportunity should still be taken advantage of. I can't get over the people that don't go to class and then complain of poor grades. Even if people can pull of good grades when not going, I still think they are cheating themselves out of something by staying home.


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Mindsigh
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14 Nov 2012, 2:12 pm

Darn double meanings! I miss (as in wish I still was) going to college, where I was known to occasionally miss (not attend) a class or two. Or three, or five. I wound up taking 10 years to get a bachelors degree partly because of having to drop classes that were hard to get to or were just bad classes and partly because of life interference.

I had a class where the professor had some kind of major illness for most of the course and taught by proxy and graded our papers from the hospital. I got a D (unheard of for me for an English course!! !) and couldn't meet with him to ask him why. Dropped it.

I had a class that met a 6:30 a.m. Dropped it.


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ianorlin
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14 Nov 2012, 2:13 pm

I always go and like being in class. Studying on my own can be harder at times.



quux
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14 Nov 2012, 3:40 pm

I hate missing classes, but this year I'm kind of forced to, because of the way it's organized. We get all the course's material anyway, but we have over 30 teachers, and each of them do their own thing, so going to classes doesn't really benefit me, when I can work on the stuff we get, at my own rhythm and at home... At this point, going to classes actually negatively impacts my performance.



Soomie
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14 Nov 2012, 4:46 pm

Mindsigh wrote:
Darn double meanings! I miss (as in wish I still was) going to college, where I was known to occasionally miss (not attend) a class or two. Or three, or five. I wound up taking 10 years to get a bachelors degree partly because of having to drop classes that were hard to get to or were just bad classes and partly because of life interference.

I had a class where the professor had some kind of major illness for most of the course and taught by proxy and graded our papers from the hospital. I got a D (unheard of for me for an English course!! !) and couldn't meet with him to ask him why. Dropped it.

I had a class that met a 6:30 a.m. Dropped it.


The same thing sort of happened to me last semester! My Bio teacher injured herself and ended up in the hospital. For a while we had substitutes and she just sort of graded things from the hospital. But then she decided we weren't coming back, so my school had to find other people to teach the class. Over the semester we had 4 different professors, each with their own methods of teaching and grading. Needless to say, I got frustrated but at least pulled a C in the class.



thewhitrbbit
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14 Nov 2012, 5:20 pm

I do NOT miss classes.

In class, you have to sit in a chair for 90 minutes, can't move, listen to someone talk.

At work, I have 3 buildings I"m responsible for so I can walk around make site visits, stay mobile.



profofhumanities
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15 Nov 2012, 3:57 pm

Soomie wrote:
So, all of my classes are in the morning and I have to walk thirty minutes to class, which requires waking up super early. I usually go to my first class on monday, because it's an important class. After that class there's an hour break until the next one, and then there's a two hour break after that one. Instead of sitting around on campus for three hours with nothing to do, I usually just walk back home and relax and just don't go to the other two. I only have philosophy on tuesday/thursday, and the professor grades on attendance, but I hate that class. I don't like his teaching style, because he just writes 3 page word documents and reads them to us. I can do that at home. Anyway, I just see those classes as a waste of time when I could be doing other things that interest me, or cleaning my living space or something. I thought in college you were supposed to be an adult, not have other adults coddle you and punish you if you stay home. If I'm doing well, why does it matter? All throughout school I have made mostly A's and B's (I think I have only pulled one C and one D, and I have never failed a class) with minimum effort. I don't see why that should change...

Sorry if I'm rambling, but does anyone else have this problem with college?


I'd like to answer this one from a college instructor's perspective. I have heard the "We're adults" complaint for a long time.
Yes, we realize you are adults. We can be very understanding when job hours are changed or a baby is ill. However, the gap-between-classes problem can usually be avoided with careful scheduling. As an example, I usually have 1/2 of the students in an 8AM class stop attending after the first few weeks. What do they tell me? (It's so early!) Well, considering that the course is offered in 10 different time slots, why did you sign up for an 8AM? (The other classes were all booked. I waited until the last minute to register for classes.)
So, now it becomes my problem. I HATE having to mark F's at the end of the semester. I wish I could mark all A's, but the studdents who do not attend class tend to miss assignments as well and then I have to assign a grade.
Please, register for classes at the first opportunity. Your academic advisor can help you arrrange a schedule that will have few, if any, breaks. Ask other students about the best teachers to take, or look at RateMyProfessor.com and see if any names are there. (So you can avoid the boring philosophy guy.)
There are ways to make the schedule work for you. I promise.


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bethmc
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16 Nov 2012, 11:13 am

I don't understand the comment: "...sitting around on campus with nothing to do..."

Don't you have homework? Don't you need to go to the library for research for projects or papers? What about just catching up on your reading for class?
If it takes you 30 minutes to get to your home, then you only have an hour before you have to turn around and head back to campus - no wonder you end up staying at home and missing classes. So the first step seems to be, stop going home between those classes.

Part of college/university life is like every other part of life: there are hoops to jump through and that's just part of the process. If you skip out on all the classes you're not interested in or those which don't agree with your schedule, it's going to be really hard for you to finish that degree.

Meanwhile, if you don't finish that degree, your chances of finding a job with the more agreeable hoops to jump through shrink drastically. ALL jobs have stupid assignments that make no sense, but when you're stuck taking any job you can because your education is lacking, then you're going to be stuck with fewer and fewer options, which means you're probably not going to like what you end up doing for a living.

Maybe this doesn't matter to you right now because it's so far in the future that it's hard to see it, but it's there - trust me. Go to class. Who knows...you might accidentally learn something.



OddDuckNash99
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16 Nov 2012, 1:42 pm

The only time in college I would miss classes on a somewhat regular basis was my freshman year, just because my panic attacks at that time still were so bad that they'd physically make me "freeze" and unable to make it out of my room. That, and my hypersomnia was so bad that I routinely had to miss a class to do homework due for another class. (I would sleep all afternoon and night, uncontrollably.) But it's true that you are literally wasting money for every class you don't attend.

That being said, I DO think it's stupid when college courses grade on attendance. You ARE an adult. If you choose to miss, that's your decision, and you will deal with potential consequences. Unless it's a course that is dependent on class discussion (mainly upper-level courses), I feel grading attendance is juvenile. You're allowed personal days and sick days at a job, so why not in college?


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16 Nov 2012, 3:01 pm

profofhumanities wrote:
Soomie wrote:
So, all of my classes are in the morning and I have to walk thirty minutes to class, which requires waking up super early. I usually go to my first class on monday, because it's an important class. After that class there's an hour break until the next one, and then there's a two hour break after that one. Instead of sitting around on campus for three hours with nothing to do, I usually just walk back home and relax and just don't go to the other two. I only have philosophy on tuesday/thursday, and the professor grades on attendance, but I hate that class. I don't like his teaching style, because he just writes 3 page word documents and reads them to us. I can do that at home. Anyway, I just see those classes as a waste of time when I could be doing other things that interest me, or cleaning my living space or something. I thought in college you were supposed to be an adult, not have other adults coddle you and punish you if you stay home. If I'm doing well, why does it matter? All throughout school I have made mostly A's and B's (I think I have only pulled one C and one D, and I have never failed a class) with minimum effort. I don't see why that should change...

Sorry if I'm rambling, but does anyone else have this problem with college?


I'd like to answer this one from a college instructor's perspective. I have heard the "We're adults" complaint for a long time.
Yes, we realize you are adults. We can be very understanding when job hours are changed or a baby is ill. However, the gap-between-classes problem can usually be avoided with careful scheduling. As an example, I usually have 1/2 of the students in an 8AM class stop attending after the first few weeks. What do they tell me? (It's so early!) Well, considering that the course is offered in 10 different time slots, why did you sign up for an 8AM? (The other classes were all booked. I waited until the last minute to register for classes.)
So, now it becomes my problem. I HATE having to mark F's at the end of the semester. I wish I could mark all A's, but the studdents who do not attend class tend to miss assignments as well and then I have to assign a grade.
Please, register for classes at the first opportunity. Your academic advisor can help you arrrange a schedule that will have few, if any, breaks. Ask other students about the best teachers to take, or look at RateMyProfessor.com and see if any names are there. (So you can avoid the boring philosophy guy.)
There are ways to make the schedule work for you. I promise.
The thing is I want more 8am classes because I have to get up that early to catch a van every day so my costs are sunk. Also I focus better then. I have been mad my 8am Friday sections got canceled multiple times. I actually find studying on my own harder because I end up on here or other places no my computer then going to office hours or in lecture.



profofhumanities
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17 Nov 2012, 5:14 pm

OddDuckNash99 wrote:
The only time in college I would miss classes on a somewhat regular basis was my freshman year, just because my panic attacks at that time still were so bad that they'd physically make me "freeze" and unable to make it out of my room. That, and my hypersomnia was so bad that I routinely had to miss a class to do homework due for another class. (I would sleep all afternoon and night, uncontrollably.) But it's true that you are literally wasting money for every class you don't attend.

That being said, I DO think it's stupid when college courses grade on attendance. You ARE an adult. If you choose to miss, that's your decision, and you will deal with potential consequences. Unless it's a course that is dependent on class discussion (mainly upper-level courses), I feel grading attendance is juvenile. You're allowed personal days and sick days at a job, so why not in college?


A good point. What most of my colleagues on my campus do is offer two weeks' worth of absences "free" before the grade is affected. Then, the points start coming off. If a student missed work more than that without some major explanation, the student would be fired. It is practice for the working world, which a great deal of our students need.


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