To go along with my last post about college freedom, my post about the dangers of skipping class. It seems fun to skip every once and awhile, but I promise in college you won’t have the same experience in high school. There is a difference in high school and college and it’s in the amount of work covered in class. It’s not uncommon for professors to lecture from the time they walk into the classroom to the time class is over. My history professor did this quite often during my first semester. He left little time for questions…so there wasn’t even really breaks for that unless we had a paper assignment due or something. So in that case for every class you miss you are missing a whole class full of talking from class begin to class end. I am going to give you some tips on how to skip with grace.
Don’t ask a ton of questions during class the day after
I know it sucks to be far behind…but don’t ask a ton of questions during class time the next day. If you have questions ask the professor or another student outside of class time. Teachers have to be there during office hours so go then to catch up a bit. Don’t monopolize the time of the entire class who was there when you skipped.
Don’t ask a teacher if you “missed anything important”
Even if you don’t consider it truth, everything is important, don’t be the rude student who disrespects the teacher and their lectures in front of them. Everything is important, and there has to be a reason they are teaching a college course and you are not.
Get together a skip group
Get together a group of kids that are willing to swap notes with you in the event that one of you is sick and can’t make it to class. Also this skip group is great if you go to a smaller class where the teacher likes to keep tabs on where the student is. Instead of just being presumed to be skipping for no reason your skip group friends can vouch that you were actually sick instead of just skipping for the fun of it.
Make sure that the people in your skip group take as detailed of notes as you.
If you just let anyone in your skip group your notes could be subpar and inefficient. The whole point of the group is to get great notes even when you have to miss.
Catch up
Make sure you are turning in any assignments that you missed if you can and reading the assignments assigned even if you are missing. If you don’t catch up after you miss you will constantly be two steps behind everyone else and you do not want that.
Don’t skip if it is not necessary
I am guilty of it, and you are guilty of it—but try not to be. Last semester I only skipped six classes the entire semester which is kind of a goal for me. I still need practice though because 3 of those skips were in the same class (ironically one of the classes I made an A in.) Most of the skips were because of sickness 3.5, and I say .5 because I wasn’t really sick for one of the skips but I had been sick the day before which caused me to miss three of the classes…throwing up sucks.
Ultimately the less you skip the more you get out of your class.
When you skip you are missing valuable class time. This class time allows you to have intelligent conversations with your professors and classmates and it also allows you a ton of time to condense the information while in class so you don’t have to study as much later. The more classes you attend the less you will have to cram for finals.
I hope this helped you out a lot. Remember to keep calm and get some class!
