What Attendance?

Posted by Braden

In some classes, you read one thing in your book, another in your supplement, learn another in recitation, and another in lecture--then you get tested over all of them. In others, you read about one thing, then read about it again, then go over it in class with a PowerPoint that uses pictures and words from the book, then test over that one thing that you've now heard 3 times!

I have a class this semester which is at 8 o'clock in the morning, and all of the notes and PowerPoint presentations are online. The exam comes entirely from these two sources of material, and the lecturers each day are the authors of the chapter you read, so most of the interesting points that they have to make are already in the written copy of the notes which I have.

So I . . . don't go to class. I went up until the first exam, to make sure that I understood how the class worked and how tough the exams were. And I haven't been since. I took a second exam for the class last week, and got a decent A on it--not a 100 percent, but a high enough A that I think I'll keep on doing what I've been doing. I can read through the material faster than I can hear it spoken to me, and I can do it in my pajamas in the comfort of my home on early Monday mornings instead of walking across campus to hear it.

Ah, college--you and I are going to get along really well; I can tell.