Spring Break is over and you’re wondering where did time go, not because you’ve been so busy this semester but because you’ve only been to a handful of classes and the semester is almost over. You can remember where it all went wrong; it was the first day of courses and you realize your professor doesn’t check attendance. He just starts going into his lecture notes and pulls up a forty-page powerpoint presentation. That’s it, that’s the whole class.
To be on the safe side, you showed up for class the second week to see if anything would change. But it didn’t; it’s still the same large room with a max-capacity student body and a boring professor who drones on without taking attendance.
Before you knew it, you were skipping classes every week, emailing random classmates to ask for lecture notes and only showing up when there was a scheduled exam on the syllabus.
I took Intro to Film History last semester. It was a class just like this, and I took a day or two off to get more hours in at work. No big deal — the professor even supplied us with lecture notes and a study guide. When it came time for the first exam I thought nothing of the days I skipped to make more money. After all, I had the notes and the study guide. I was prepared as long as I studied them, right?
Wrong. On that first exam I, along with everyone else that skipped a class or two, learned that the last twenty to thirty questions of every exam was especially for students who showed up to lectures. If you missed his class, he’d take a chunk out of your grade!
So, before you remove that alarm setting from your phone, just think about what you’re doing by not showing up to class. Keep in mind that you’ve already paid for this class (somewhere around $300 per class) and that’s not money you can get back. This is college; professors aren’t going to hold your hand and make sure you attend every class, especially when it’s a general course.
It’s so easy to fall into a pattern of missing classes. You think it’ll just be this one time — you need to catch up on studying for another class, or you need to pull another shift at work, or you need to finish that paper, it’s just this one time. All it takes is once and then you’re hooked, you find yourself making up elaborate excuses to keep missing classes and before you know it, it’s time for midterms or worse, final exams.
You are an adult; it’s up to you to take your education seriously now. That means showing up for class, whether the professor takes attendance or not.
