Monday, August 23, 2010

College Life: Fact or Fiction?

Well, for most of us, it's our last week in our own towns before we pack it all up (hopefully you guys have started on this at least a little bit!), say goodbye to most of our friends and family and head out "on our own". Ironic, since the last thing we are as students living in the residence halls is on our own.
I'm absolutely sure I'm not the only one excited to move in this year. But I'm sure I'm not the only one who's totally anxious about it too. Not only am I going to be thrown into an entirely different environment housing-wise, I feel it's going to be an entirely different environment school-wise too. I've often heard from people that you not only don't have homework, but you don't even have to go to class either and can show up late whenever you want. Maybe it's just me and the way my high school ran, but why do I feel this isn't going to be true? Who really wants to be the kid who walks in late and gets reprimanded for it? Not me. But this got me wondering - who else has been told things like this? What kind of things have you heard about college that you're not sure about or know aren't true? And for those of you beyond freshman year, have you ever been "that kid"?

Let me know!
-Kayla

5 comments:

  1. Truancy in high school isn't good because you are an unsupervised minor, which can be illegal to a certain extent. Plus you'll miss homework and lectures and discussions that probably aren't online. The professor wont like it if you stumble into his or her class in the middle of it, but if you miss it completely and they have the notes up on D2L or something, you aren't going to get marked absent or get in trouble.

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  2. Usually in classes of big lecture halls it's very common for people to be late every day or even never show up! Most professors don't take attendance, anyway. But it's really bad to get into the "ghost student" habit because it's super hard to get out of and the next thing you know, you have no idea what's going on in class!

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  3. Depending on your profs/courseload there's still plenty of homework to be done, think more papers and projects and less busywork like the stuff you did in high school.

    Virtually all profs I've had in the past, even ones with bad vision/hearing, could absolutely tell when you're walking in late, even if they don't make it a point to let you know that they noticed.. Usually this didn't result in a direct hit to your grade, but it leaves a very bad impression which can hurt you in the end.

    And I have had plenty of profs who took attendance, every single day, and others who would change important dates last notice, or change up the hw from what was in the syllabus, and announce it at the start of class. Point blank, even if you're getting nothing out of the lectures and there is no attendance being taken, not being there WILL hurt your grade.

    Plus many teachers are very observant as to who is and isn't coming to their class, and who has been participating in class... Being on the good side of your profs never ever hurts.

    I guess what it all boils down to is- what grade do you want?

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  4. Thanks for your input guys. Very helpful.

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  5. I think it's sometimes even WORSE to have college classes without homework. Then, you're not motivated to do the reading, and when an exam comes, you don't let yourself sleep two days before your exam because you've got to read 7 HUGE chapters worth of what you skipped!

    As for attendance: Some classes do take attendance, some don't A lot of times you meet three times a week for a class, twice for lecture and once for discussion. The discussion TA usually DOES take attendance, and it counts in your GRADE (about 5% usually). So coming to discussion can mean the difference between an A or a B!

    For the most part, though, you're on your own. You make your own success or failure. DON'T get behind! It's so hard to catch up in college!

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