Gettin' Down With Don
Don Seipel
Issue date: 11/13/08 Section: Lifestlyes
This will come as an unfortunate shock to many professors around campus, but sometimes college students don't come prepared for class.
By sometimes, of course, I mean nearly always.
Usually, it's not a malicious decision on the part of the student.
He or she simply didn't have time to read chapters four through nine in the book and rent "Madagascar." Or, perhaps the student just forgot.
Regardless, the result is a classroom full of silent, dull stares answering every question the professor poses. It's just as awkward for us as it is for you.
It is such a common issue that I have to wonder how anything ever gets done in class.
In nearly every course I'm taking this semester, I have experienced at least one class period in which it was clear that no one had so much as cracked the book over the weekend.
We're all in college by choice, I hope, and I doubt very much that we can all afford to pay Capital's borderline exorbitant tuition and not learn anything.
Yet we manage to come to class every day with not the slightest idea what the discussion will be about.
This is especially apparent in reading-heavy English classes, where on any given day at least one or two students will be conspicuously silent. It is safe to assume that those people didn't read the assigned pages.
Of course, no class in any dedicated major can come close to University Core classes, in which the silent few take over class completely.
U.C. classes are, for many students, the least important hour in their schedule. It's not hard to imagine why, if crunched for time, the assignments for U.C. courses are the first to fall off a student's to-do list.
Professors have many different tactics to combat this.
Some prefer to simply repeat the question or wait in silence until someone throws out a half-hearted guess. Others will slowly answer the question themselves, as though they are actually reminding the class of a fact they forgot rather than imparting new information.
By sometimes, of course, I mean nearly always.
Usually, it's not a malicious decision on the part of the student.
He or she simply didn't have time to read chapters four through nine in the book and rent "Madagascar." Or, perhaps the student just forgot.
Regardless, the result is a classroom full of silent, dull stares answering every question the professor poses. It's just as awkward for us as it is for you.
It is such a common issue that I have to wonder how anything ever gets done in class.
In nearly every course I'm taking this semester, I have experienced at least one class period in which it was clear that no one had so much as cracked the book over the weekend.
We're all in college by choice, I hope, and I doubt very much that we can all afford to pay Capital's borderline exorbitant tuition and not learn anything.
Yet we manage to come to class every day with not the slightest idea what the discussion will be about.
This is especially apparent in reading-heavy English classes, where on any given day at least one or two students will be conspicuously silent. It is safe to assume that those people didn't read the assigned pages.
Of course, no class in any dedicated major can come close to University Core classes, in which the silent few take over class completely.
U.C. classes are, for many students, the least important hour in their schedule. It's not hard to imagine why, if crunched for time, the assignments for U.C. courses are the first to fall off a student's to-do list.
Professors have many different tactics to combat this.
Some prefer to simply repeat the question or wait in silence until someone throws out a half-hearted guess. Others will slowly answer the question themselves, as though they are actually reminding the class of a fact they forgot rather than imparting new information.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
John
posted 11/20/08 @ 6:30 PM EST
Don,
You'd be wise to squeeze every morsel of knowledge out of your undergraduate education as you can -- and every nickel out of it, too.
You will desperately need it when you get into the job market. (Continued…)
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