Tick, Tock, Clock...

"This is your life, and it's passing you one by one minute at a time..."

Look at the picture to the right ->

Does it look familiar? Well it shouldn't, if you're getting as much as you can out of your classes. Sometimes, I'll get a class that is so enthralling, I'm heavily involved and don't even realize when class is over. Sometimes, I'll get a class that's so numbingly difficult I hype myself up on coffee and tape my eyelids open so that I don't miss anything, but usually end up doing so anyway. Most of the time, I'm watching that little red hand go steadily around on its race track. I'm trying to employ the latent telekenisis powers I unfortunately don't possess to will the long black hand quickly to the big 12 at the top. I'm "stretching out my back" to get hopeful and dissapointing glances at this merciless dictator.

Why should class be like this? Shouldn't I feel my mind expanding, forming new synapses in my brain while I absorb intruiging content? Or should I feel rooted to my seat by some cruelly smug invisible force while I feel my cells slowly decay with age? A few days ago, I realized that one of my professors was drawing EVERY example and lecture out of the book. We ate up countless minutes of the hour painfully sketching intricate graphs that were printed for us in the books we dropped a hundred bucks or more for. I groaned as internally as possible as the professor entertained the most mundane and irrelevant questions about the nutritional value of icecream, the evils of collegiate beauracracy, and the trials and tribulations of marriage. I'm not going to give him away because he seems like a nice guy, but let's just say that the class has nothing to do with any of these in anything but the farthest stretch of a diseased imagination. I decided enough was enough. I waited until the break, packed my bags discretely, and didn't return. I went and got my allergy shots at the Palo Alto clinic. I made myself a great meal at home, and read the chapter we had been talking about. I used the online resource that came with the book to quiz myself briefly, and with a cumulative study time of about half an hour, I was confident in the material and had gotten a lot done. I took the test today, and breezed through it. There was one question that I was even at all unsure about, and even then I'm pretty sure about my answer. The only negative I suffered from electing to use my time efficiently was that I missed a hand-out that was given at the end of class.

The teacher hadn't taken any time to discuss the hand out, and we ended up doing it the next class because no one did it anyway. Had he collected the hand out, I would've lost points because I didn't want to dwindle my life away in that ridiculously under-sized desk not learning the subject matter. You know what could've been done? The handout could've been posted online. In fact, the way this specific instructor "teaches" the class could be conducted entirely online. It is, but the fact is how is anyone to know that the instructor is going to teach this way before it's too late to do anything about it? I specifically chose this course as an in-class endeavor because I thought I'd benefit from the face-to-face interaction. But I come to class to get something extra, to go more in depth. I'm the kind of guy who can benefit a lot from an enganging teacher and a fervent class discussion. I'm the kind of guy who prefers to waste a hundred dollars on a text book and sell it back at the end of the quarter, having not opened it at all if I can get away with it, simply because the lecture was so informative. If we're learning directly and exclusively out of the text, please let me do it on my own time, in my own manner. The PA clinic only does allergy shots from 8:30-11:30, and every discussion about why using Big Macs in an example isn't politically correct is costing me potential salvation from congestion.

I've spoken on my online Music class before, how it employed eTudes to deliver tests and quizzes, announcements, and essay questions. The text was throrough and interesting while the open book exams were designed in a manner that ensured you read every word. Another facet of this class was that it was what I consider "hybrid". A student had the option of coming into class when he/she wanted to. The instructor gave credit for turning in class worksheets and class notes, and posted a schedule of what chapter would be taught each class so you could keep up and decide on classes you wanted to go to. Since the grading system was based entirely on accumulated points, students had incentive to go to class if they didn't understand the material and were doing poorly (not only to further their understanding, but also to get extra points). I never went to a physical class and got an A doing everything online, but I'm sure that if I did go to class I wouldn't feel that I was wasting my life away. I'd know that I was there only because I wanted/needed to be, and that if class wasn't helping me I'd have the option of not attending with no artificially ill consequence. After all, Big Macs are only so interesting for so long...