triskellian | To go or not to go...

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studying

To go or not to go...

I spent this morning in a lecture on the history and varieties of the English language. The subject is pretty much central to my course, and it should in theory be really interesting. What actually happened was that the lecturer spent about half an hour faffing around and taking the register, then handed out a question sheet relating to a video he was about to show, read out the entire question sheet to the class, and then put the video on (a Melvyn Bragg thing from ITV several years ago*). While the video was showing, we dutifully wrote down the answers to the questions on the sheet (no analysis or thought required - the questions were all directly answered in the video). Then we had five minutes to "discuss your answers with your neighbour", then another twenty minutes of going through the questions with the whole class, by which time I was ready to bang my head against the wall.

While relating this tale of woe to a lunch table** of colleagues, someone asked "so why do you keep going to the classes?". It really hadn't occured to me not to - I'm a Good Student***, and attending classes is deeply ingrained, even though in this case it's reasonably clear that I could cover more of the subject, and in more detail, with an equivalent amount of time spent sitting at home with some books.

And so, in the time honoured tradition of using LJ to make vitally important life decisions, I present a poll!

[Poll #672963]

It also occurs to me that the current arrangement of my lectures means my weekly day off is split between Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons, and if I stop going to this class, I could switch my half day to Thursday mornings, which is much easier all round.

*Which amused me by asterisking out two letters of a perfectly good Anglo-Saxon word, and by drawing a parallel between medieval traditions of courtly love and "today's three-minute pop song", to the strains of the thoroughly up-to-date "Unchained melody". And then it annoyed me by talking about changing fashions in names with a list entirely composed of male names.

** "Lunch table" is the collective noun for people who work in my department, because we all have lunch together every day, and there is much bitching and piss-taking and randomness.

*** "Good Student" in the sense that I usually do what I'm told, rather than in the sense of getting good grades, though I do that too ;-)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'd be keeping on going to the lectures, but - is there any sort of lecture plan at all? Which would mean that you could do the work that needs to be done for the right week, which would satisfy my weird brain anyway.
Central to all of this is whether you can cadge the handouts from anyone, of course!

There is a lecture plan, and if I drop the lectures, I would indeed be planning to read the appropriate stuff for the week ;-)

(I'm also considering inventing an important work-related meeting on Tuesday mornings, so I can blag the notes straight from the lecturer ;-)

I ask about the plan, mainly because we were hardly ever given one for our undergrad lectures, so there was no way of knowing what we'd missed without sending someone to pick up the notes!

Important meetings = good :-)

And I am living proof ;)

It's a problem cos my first experience of HE was Maths, where you more-or-less have to attend lectures. If I'd been doing a wussy subject first time around, I wouldn't be so conflicted now ;-)

You, outside! Now!

Oh, I didn't mean you. Clearly your subject (Psychology? Or am I imagining that?) was not a wussy one, and it was by sheer strength of intellect that you coped without attending lectures. It was subjects like, umm... <looks at flist> mumble that I meant!

Ahem. That doesn't help, does it?

<runs away>

Her subject can kick your subject's ass, biatch.

It's a problem cos my first experience of HE was Maths, where you more-or-less have to attend lectures.

Seconded. I missed no lectures at all across my three year course. There is a sense in which they were the course despite the fact we'd all have crashed and burned without the tutorials.

As far as the poll goes, I'd find someone at the institution (do you have a tutor ?) and ask them. Of course, this can backfire. When I mentioned to my MSc tutor that I wasn't attending functional programming lectures because I knew the material already he was most unimpressed and told me they were very important. So I conceded the point and agreed to go... then skipped them anyway because he had clearly missed the point. And besides, they clashed with Thieves Guild II GM meeetings. I'm fairly certain I got 100% on that section on the exam in the end, though I'll never know since they refused to give us the marks (!).

Technically, I have a tutor. I've never met him, and he might not even recognise my name if he saw it in a list. And any advice he has to offer is likely to be the official line, with no allowances made for the fact that I'm clever and motivated enough to do the work on my own, or that my time has more demands on it than the full-timers... thought of that option already ;-)

In which case don't go to the lectures. Your motivations in studying the course are largely personal anyway, so it makes sense to get as much out of it as possible rather than trying to conform to the institution's cookie-cutter concept of what students need.

Are all the lectures going to be given by the same guy? If so, it might be worth going to just one more to check that this wasn't a one-off because of the video he wanted to show...?

And I feel your pain - I'm not sure I could bunk off lectures even if they were the biggest waste of time ever. Which is silly.

Yep, it's all him (with one exception later in the term). And this was the third session, plus I've attended a couple of his lectures before, so I'm reasonably certain it's not going to improve :-(

Keep going. There's a scheduled end at it, and it's always possibly he'll say something useful that isn't in the books.

He might, but I don't think it's particularly likely, and it's even less likely that the hypothetical useful thing he says will be relevant enough to the assessment that missing it will have any effect on my grade if I've otherwise done the reading...

God, that's a pretty damning assessment, isn't it?

In the age old tradition you appear to have answered your own question. All that remains for me to do is to back you up as most likely to know what's going on here...

Skip 'em.

I never did in Maths, but I skipped a few in Philosophy as it varied course-by-course what the connection was between the lecturer, the lectures, and the papers. Often they were... loosely-coupled, is the term these days.
Sometimes they remained interesting if not useful, sometimes neither. I reckon you've hit the latter case here.

There were a few times I cut class to spend my time more productively at the OTB, but there were also perfectly cuttable classes I attended, without which I never (or, at least, much later) would have found out about useful materials that were mentioned in passing and were not part of the official lecture or reading.

Oh, yeah, I remember when you finally told me about playing the ponies instead of going to mythology . . .

Go to the lectures (as noted above, there might be something important, or alternatively tested/evaluated that you'd otherwise miss). If it appears to be timewasting, sit at the back and do the reading/coursework unobtrusively during the lecture, listening with half an ear for anything that might be interesting/important. It's a compromise, but it can work for you - upside being, no extra time at home to do the homework.

Small classroom, 30-40 people... hiding at the back with a book isn't terribly viable :-(

I would skip 'em without a qualm -- I ruthlessly cut all the useless lecturers' courses and managed to get everything necessary from books, and that wasn't because I'm amazingly wonderful or anything* but because generally speaking it wasn't rocket science** and anyone with half a brain could get a solid grasp of it via the books.

* Although in fact I am ;-)
** Apart from the thermodynamics, relativity, kinetic theory, atomic, nuclear, particle etc, which I suppose were actually rocket science in a very real sense.

I had a biology class that I would prefer to have skipped. All the instructor (professor? he might have been) did, really, was read from the blasted book. He gave me an A on a paper that was pure crap. I don't know why, but I was one of the pet students.

Going to classes helped however, because when he screwed up and put a question on a test that we hadn't gone over, those of us in class knew that it was in later material. It wasn't something he slipped in out of sequence when we weren't there. And if he had, we would have known, and gotten that question right. He asked for a definition of hemolymph. And I still remember what that is, even though I don't think I've ever used the word since that class. See how helpful that was?

I would go because maybe the part of class where you discuss with your "neighbor" and the rest of the class may be enlightening, where the lecture is not. However, if you really think you'll be fine, and attending will be detrimental, then don't go.

I try and go to all my lectures, even when we had someone who sounded like Mr Bean giving the dullest lectures on insolvency. If he hands out notes for the lecture (we have copies of all the slides) go along to a few and see if he adds anything to what you've read/got on the slide. If not, start skipping some. I've had a few lectures where I learn nothing more than what I've already done, so just get the notes and leave.

In fact this is a lecturer who accidently skipped a slide during the lecture and said 'oh don't worry about that'...

Or I do the crossword.

God, one lecture was so awful and boring and complicated and made no sense that our little group at the back wrote down every swear word we could think of. Ha. Sometimes we act like we're 12.

I'd ask someone who has taken the course whether it's worth sitting it out (ie. a variant on

bateleur's ask a tutor comment).

The only other time it's worth continuing is if the lecturer actually notices who goes and whether he connects them to names.

(I once heard a story about a lecturer who, knowing he was going to miss his lecture, set up a tape recorder at the start of the afternoon with him on it, giving the lecture. He came back to find no students and a set of dictaphones recording it. No idea if it's true or not.)

I know there's a scene in Real Genius where the non-Val Kilmer main character goes to a lecture where he's the only body in the hall.

I shamelessly skipped lectures at uni and also classes at colleges when I was doing my A levels with (almost) no harm done to my grades. In some cases I am certain that spending the same amount of time reading had significantly greater benefit.

I was going to say "is there a chance they'll pick up", but you answered that above. Why waste your time?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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