We each spend, on average, about four hours every day seated inside a classroom. Pen in hand scrambling across sheet after sheet of lined paper, attempting to recreate the professors’ lectures into legible notes. Reflecting on this process, as I slowly became aware of my brain wandering further and further away from the Prosimians we were studying in anthropology, I realized that a professors’ job wasn’t to teach you. Their job is to present information in the best way, for you to record it, so you can teach yourself, or rather, learn for yourself later.
Studying on your own time is ultimately required. As a freshman, I have spent a little over two months on campus. In that short time I have concluded I have learned more on my own than inside the classroom. Coming to this conclusion, however, I encountered several questions. What is the point of dragging yourself out of bed to mindlessly stare forward in a class of 200 when the material is posted online and testing is announced? Where is the motivation? The purpose? …Other than a check beside your name in attendance. Might as well be an online course. I realize that professors post their slides online as an aid to students, but why even host class if the test will not include any other material from your spoken lecture? Printing PowerPoint after PowerPoint, toting them to class in hope of putting my new highlighters to use… only disappointed every time. I think I utilize more ink on my margin doodles than my actual notations. It is puzzling that professors choose to expend significant amounts of energy to reread their slides in class and even more substantial amounts of time to hold class.
On another note, learning that happens outside of the classroom is never only about test material. I feel as though I have learned more about myself in the last two months at this university, than my entire lifetime. This collegiate lifestyle forces you to spend more time alone and I believe you learn most about yourself when confronted with your own thoughts. Even more so, in my University 101 class we are focusing on identifying our values and the reasons behind them. When people claim that you learn most about yourself in college, they aren’t lying.
Taking these two things into account, one must acknowledge that college is what you put into it. Choosing to bank on class instruction for an education will get you mediocre grades, appropriate for your mediocre effort. Wasting your “alone time” on Twitter/Instagram focusing on other people, will just postpone getting to know yourself.