To go or not to go...
Feb. 14th, 2006 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
triskellianI 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 ;-)
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 ;-)
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-14 05:28 pm (UTC)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.