Word: classroom
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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What I feel I have missed most, however, is the collective experience of being in a classroom. The social atmosphere differentiates a real course from a correspondence course or classes at the University of Phoenix, a new on-line university. Choosing where to sit, whispering conversations with your neighbor, scoping out fellow students, writing down memorable quotes from the instructor--these are things that make going to class worthwhile. And at the end of the term, you feel as though you have endured something together with your classmates. In high school, I had friends I hung out with outside...
Next week marks my last week of classes in college (and, perhaps, for the rest of my life). And yet, it is something of a bittersweet milestone for me. You see, I estimate that throughout my college career my classroom attendance, in lectures and sections, has barely hovered over 50 percent...
Over the years, I have developed many justifications for this poor record. I am a student who learns well reading on my own and figuring things out for myself. Classroom time was useless for many science classes where understanding concepts and solving problems on my own was all that mattered. And why should I bother struggling to stay awake through a 9 a.m. lecture when I could watch it in the library on my own time...
...reserve in the libraries. Lecture notes, handouts and assignments are often posted on course Web sites. Most course logistics are handled by e-mail. And with digital submission of assignments in some departments, notably computer science, one could conceivably succeed in a course without ever setting foot in a classroom...
While I hope Harvard College never adopts an attendance policy, I have begun, albeit only recently, to see the merits of classroom attendance. There are some things that can't be learned very well from a book, concepts that require explanation and demonstration. Section discussion can, at times, be enlightening. (At times.) And classroom attendance correlates well with academic performance. (The summer before I arrived here, I met a recent Harvard grad who told me that the secret to success at the College was attending class. Of course, I went on to ignore her sage advice...