Most university students are neither layabouts nor high-achievers, but instead fall somewhere in-between. Despite the best of intentions, it’s all too easy to skip the occasional class for more socialising and/or bedtime. If this sounds depressingly like you, here’s a foolproof tip that should galvanize you into attending each and every class from now on…
Concert picture from Shutterstock
According to Lifehacker reader “Dman”, keeping tabs on the cost of each lecture/tutorial can be a strong psychological motivator that will keep you from skipping class.
On getting your money’s worth, I remember when I was going through uni that according to the cost of the units and how many lectures each one had, I worked out that each lecture was costing me around $90. So every time I wanted to skip a lecture, I thought of it as having bought a $90 ticket to a concert, and then not going 😛
This may sound like obvious advice, but very few students actually bother to calculate the cost of tutorials and lectures. Instead of some abstract debt, it actually puts the money you’re “spending” into perspective — including the exact amount that gets wasted whenever you decide to skip a class. (If your parents are footing the bill, that should encourage you not to waste the money even more!)
See also: How To Buy University Textbooks On The Cheap | Ask LH: Should I Pay Off My HELP Debt?
Comments
14 responses to “Treat Uni Classes Like Rock Concerts To Boost Your Attendance”
Sunk cost fallacy. If there’s more to gain by not going to the lecture (whether socially or academically), then what you’ve spent so far doesn’t matter. You’ll most likely still get the piece of paper anyway.
Though I think the fallacy of the sunk costs fallacy is that it assumes one can objectively weigh up the pros and cons of persisting/giving up.
Organising someone to go super-sayan in the middle of your lecture may also increase attendance
^QUT student right there
I lived on campus, and for 2.5 years I missed only about 6 classes, I made it my goal to turn up to all classes or tutorials regardless of my state (I learnt my soaking information in). In microeconomics, the lecturer was not the best, however as class numbers dwindled she announced to the 20 or so people present that the content of today’s lecture will be 30% of the final exam, and she advised that we should keep this information to ourselves. Any way the next week was a full lecture again.
I’ve completed courses at uni without attending a single lecture or tutorial with good results. I don’t feel like I wasted any money.
Do engineering, failure to attend often results in severe disadvantage. Not attending any lectures means unlikely to pass the course (my observation is continual tardiness leads to dropping out entirely), not attending tutorials or practicals can be a guaranteed fail for a lot of courses. 20+ contact hours a week full time plus extra lab/library time as necessary, it’s easy to apply yourself.
This. 10^6 times this!
That was not my experience studying engineering.
I didn’t attend a lot of lectures, and I did fine. The trick is to workout what lectures you don’t need to go to. There was one unit where i only went to two lectures, the one at the very start and the review lecture at the end, and i only atteneded tutorials to hand work in.
I know many of my Civil Engineering friends had the same experience as you and would always make fun of me for going to classes. The simple fact of the matter was if I missed classes for my digital/wireless comms, signal and image processing and digital system design courses, I would have failed. Thats before I mention the time I spent doing team projects and thesis.
Brian Lovell, Adam Postula, and Mark Schulz?
Civils and pure software had it fairly cruisy. As soon as you needed a lab with equipment attendance was mandatory.
Yep, yep and yep. Spooky.
Reasons to attend classes:
* Constant reminder that you are a student and that you have student stuff to do. If you never/seldom turn up then it is very easy to give up
* Make sure that the lecturer knows who you are so you are not just another faceless student
* Networking with other students
* Determine if the lecturer has any pet biases/hates etc.
* Find out whether you are on track/ doing the right stuff/etc from other students
Typical, the day that I don’t visit Lifehacker is the day that one of my comments inspires an article 😛 Glad you found it useful!