quarter system.. really that much worse?

mikemac
Mon, 18 Oct 2004 13:23:25 +0000

the quarter system just flies by, and IMHO you end up spending so much time cramming for exams or rushing to turn in assignments that you don’t have the chance to reflect on the material and learn it. You’re just pushing facts into your head so you can spit them back out on a test, but at the end of the whirlwind that is the quarter system little has really sunk in.

Look at it this way. Today is Monday Oct. 18th. How far back does the start of the month seem? It only feels like a few days ago, but had you been enrolled in a quarter system and started classes on the 4th, this week many of your classes would be having midterms since its the 3rd week of the quarter. How much would you have really learned and absorbed by now? For most people they can only cram for those midterms, and the material which was scarcely digested to begin with quickly evaporates and is replaced by the things you need to learn for the next set of tests just around the corner. Add in the homework you’re busy doing and a few papers you don’t really have time to research and write carefully, and the quarter system is a recipe for shallow learning.

Its worth noting that the flagship of the UC system, Berkeley, switched away from a quarter system back to a semester system a few years back, and there are discussions at many of the other UC schools to revert.