How do professors feel about students who skip lectures?

undecided
Tue, 05 Jun 2007 16:43:16 +0000

Whatever works for you is what works for you and you might decide it’s worth it to take the grade hit in favor of a method you prefer.

However, the professor is still going to give you the grade hit.

So it’s more of a class-by-class determination. There’s no one catch-all method for determining which professors care about attendance and which don’t, and there’s no way to find out whether you do better going to class than not unless you miss a few. So it’s really up to you to decide: 1) whether it’s worth it to go to class; 2) where and how you’ll learn better. IN GENERAL, you can afford to skip huge lectures (particularly in introductory subjects), but really should think twice about skipping smaller classes.

Sometimes big lecture classes have professors who encourage attendance and so throw in little tidbits in class, such as using homework problems on the exam. Sometimes small seminar classes don’t care whether you’re there or not and test from the text exclusively. Only way to know for sure is to go.

It has a lot to do with subject matter, though. There is only so much of basic math and science that can be conveyed via lecture. If you’re a whiz at that stuff, getting up at 8am to sit for an hour listening to a professor with a barely intelligible accent go over material exactly as it appears in the book is going to be an extreme waste of time and sleep. On the flip side, the main point of humanities classes is to interact with the material, so even in the very lower levels you’re going to be expected to do some participating in order to get the benefit of the course.

As you go up, it seems to become inverse: you’re required to participate a lot more in upper division science and math (as it becomes more abstract), and are required to pay more attention to papers and your own thoughts than prevailing theory in your upper division English (as it becomes more a matter of applying methods you’ve learned to new material). How the professors deal with student attendance is completely up to the professors. Sometimes they’ll go with the flow of understanding how the material relates to an undergrad’s progress in their studies (for example, for a senior-level seminar, professors aren’t likely to penalize you for not attending; your inability to keep up with the class will take care of itself), sometimes they’ll continue to punish you like you’re in kindergarten and only punitive action will show you the error of your ways (docking points for independent thought unsubstantiated by class discussions – don’t laugh, it happens).