How is it that there are people who just get it?

[Geezer]

I am not sure about the whole "never crack open a book" before (I am guessing he saved quite a bit of money on textbooks then lol), but in all of my classes, there is always one person at least that destroys the average for everyone. I bet there are tons of them at MIT

The ONLY time he ever bothered with a textbook is when he needed the problem sets from the books...and then he just went to the library, photocopied the homework problems, and handed it back to the librarian (our school would only let you check out current-course texts for two hours at a time to prevent kids from checking out a text the whole semester).

Yeah, he saved a lot a money. He's also the cheapest mo-fo you've ever met, so he took a perverse pleasure in not spending several hundred bucks each semester on "useless" textbooks.

 

[flyingpig]

The ONLY time he ever bothered with a textbook is when he needed the problem sets from the books...and then he just went to the library, photocopied the homework problems, and handed it back to the librarian (our school would only let you check out current-course texts for two hours at a time to prevent kids from checking out a text the whole semester).

Yeah, he saved a lot a money. He's also the cheapest mo-fo you've ever met, so he took a perverse pleasure in not spending several hundred bucks each semester on "useless" textbooks.

Did he have a bunch of good professors then? Even if you are incredibly smart, you just can't "know" the results of experiments and such. Like if he never picked up a book before, how does he arrive at the conclusion of Faraday's experiments on magnets and such?

 

[johng23]

I don't understand why someone would pay the cost of university tuition and then not attend the lectures

Well, you're paying for a degree after all. You want to come out having learned something and having credentials which are necessary. If you are the sort of person who tends to zone out in class and not gain all that much, and then need to read that material on your own later, how do you gain anything by sitting in the lecture hall?

I skipped tons of classes in undergrad and still don't usually go in grad school. I just have a short attention span for listening to people talk, and I'm terrible at following math when someone else is writing it out or doing it on slides. I still think I got a good undergrad education though, and the degree got me into grad school, so who cares?

 

[Choppy]

That's the second time in this thread that someone jumped on that statement without quoting at the complete sentence. If it works for you not to attend the lectures, that's great. There's nothing wrong with that, in my opinion.

Personally, I would feel ripped off and would speak with the lecturers about the situation, maybe even elevate it to the chair of the department (although I'd likely make sure that other students felt the same way first). But then again, no matter how good a lecture is, some people are just better book learners. If you're happy with doing it that way and simply taking advantage of office hours for one-on-one discussions - power to you.

 

[Skrew]

That's the second time in this thread that someone jumped on that statement without quoting at the complete sentence. If it works for you not to attend the lectures, that's great. There's nothing wrong with that, in my opinion.

Personally, I would feel ripped off and would speak with the lecturers about the situation, maybe even elevate it to the chair of the department (although I'd likely make sure that other students felt the same way first). But then again, no matter how good a lecture is, some people are just better book learners. If you're happy with doing it that way and simply taking advantage of office hours for one-on-one discussions - power to you.

I am a by the book learner but I still become throughly annoyed when instructors don't do their job, my personal experience with such situations is that no one in an authority position cares to reprimand the instructor.

Department faculty form their own club and its highly unlikely they will support a student over an instructor.

 

[elfboy]

mandatory lectures /attendance records are a bad idea. I don't know why so many colleges do this. We're adults and we should be graded on performance, not attendance.

 

[Geezer]

mandatory lectures /attendance records are a bad idea. I don't know why so many colleges do this. We're adults and we should be graded on performance, not attendance.

I couldn't agree more.

I have some auditory processing issues that make it very challenging to "get" any information from lectures. The first time I was in college, I avoided attended class unless I had to. But the school had a mandatory attendance policy. I ended up with a 3.3 GPA despite doing 4.0 work...I got docked for attendance (or lack thereof).

Yep, I'm still bitter about it.