The Oakland Post

Skipping to class

By editors
Posted: Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 at 1:26 am | Last Updated: Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 at 1:26 am Comments Print This Email This Tweet This Delicious

We’ll be honest. We’re renowned for not going to class, but we still know it’s important.

We’re thrown into a different atmosphere when we enter college, one without credit review for missing classes and parental nagging if we’re living on campus, and we are forced to depend on ourselves for a change.

As college students, our biggest struggle is going to class. However, those classes we’re missing actually cost us — a lot.

Katy Culver, who teaches journalism at the University of Wisconsin, says that “college students make up the only consumer group that actively wants to get less than it paid for.”

Think about it. You’re spending $1,325 for a four-credit class, which means missing one class would cost you around $33.97 a class for a Monday/Wednesday/Friday class, $49.07 for a Tuesday/Thursday class and roughly $94.64 per class for a class that meets once a week.

Why pay so much money for something and then not commit to attending it?

As Randy Pausch, a former professor at Carnegie Mellon University once said about his role as a professor, “We play the roles of trainers, giving people access to the equipment (books, labs, our expertise) and after that, it is our job to be demanding. We need to make sure that our students are exerting themselves. We need to praise them when they deserve it and to tell them honestly when they have it in them to work harder.”

As students, we need to take advantage of our professors and use them as resources to better ourselves and prepare for our futures without them there.

Also, without the student and teacher interaction, how are we going to effectively construct relationships and use them as a resource?

You might feel like you’re not getting anything out of going to class, but you’re truly left with nothing when you don’t attend.

Getting face time with an instructor is the first step toward building a meaningful relationship: one that will definitely continue and benefit you for the rest of your life.

And that’s the reason we’re all here, right? We’re getting our degrees so that we can get jobs in this tough economy.

We see what the problem is, though. The dilemma is that no one really says we have to go to class. It’s solely up to us as students.

Students are faced with deadlines for other classes, exams to study for, a social life to tend to. It’s all too easy to skip one class to focus on all these other things.

But where is the line? Other responsibilities won’t stop, and sooner or later rationalizing makes not going to class completely excusable.

The bottom line is that going to class has its benefits and students should know that.

It shouldn’t all be on the student, though. Professors need to find a way to make attendance matter, too.

We aren’t necessarily advocating for every professor to take roll a la the fourth grade.

But professors should find a way to reward students who show up to class in some small way.

It can be discouraging when you get the same grade in a class as the random person who strolls in only on exam days. However, grades aside, you can garner a much better experience from regularly attending — support in your endeavors.