College Strategies

Lesson 3: Going to Class; What to take, What to do, What to know

Important facts you should know

Don’t hide in the back of the lecture hall. Regardless of what some people say about that being “the best place”, it is really only “the best place to sleep and socialize”. That is not what you are going to class for! Work out how much each lecture is costing you and that should be motivation enough to get the most out of it. Safest thing to do is to sit at the very front or from the middle down. Smack in the middle is also better than on the sides, especially if your professor shows slides or makes notes on the board.

To ensure a good spot it’s good to arrive a few minutes before class. If you feel uncomfortable sitting in the front row, just sit in the 3rd or 4th row, but make sure it is near the front. The reason being simple: in the back it will be harder to hear what the professor says, so you might find yourself mostly concentrating on making out his words (some don’t wear microphones!). It is also harder to follow what he puts on the board. Now it might not seem that way, but it is actually the case. Also more importantly; people at the back tend to chat more, which can distract you from the lecture. Considering everything that is being said can and will show up in a test or the exam, it is important not to miss out on anything.

There is one exception to this rule: if your professor works with PowerPoint presentations and the screen it is projected on it very high up. Sitting at the front will force you to bend your neck to see anything at all. Best place to sit is still in the middle of the lecture hall. However, if these presentations are posted on a website and are available for download after class pay close attention to what your instructors says. you can get the text in the presentation later so rather than frantically trying to copy down his/her slides write down the additional comments made in class or additional information that is not already presented on the slides. Find a system to be able to reference those notes with the appropriate slide. A good way to do this is by numbering all slides, and writing down the additional information with its respective corresponding number. If you feel you get confused by that just write down the title of the slide your notes belong to. Often people forget to listen because they are so busy copying something down that will be just a click away later, the extra information stated is then missed and on a test of exam the student loses marks unnecessarily.

Unless your professor explicitly states that no questions are to be asked during the lecture, do raise your hand if something is unclear to you. There is a good chance somebody else is sharing the same doubts. Do be aware that some professors are different than others and some do not want to start a discussion in class. If you however notice that a mistake has been made (common in subjects containing math) do point it out because later on you will not be able to make sense of your notes/calculations if it is not corrected right away. It is easy to make a mistake when writing on a board, because it is hard to check your own work. So nobody will be offended if you point out a possible mistake, if anything your prof might be impressed.

There is no worse thing than sitting at your desk the night before the exam and finding discrepancies in your notes. This can severely throw you off track if you are not absolutely confident there was a mistake in the calculation. Otherwise you might spend hours trying to find a complicated way to justify strange numbers. Obviously that is not the way to go. If you are paying close attention to the lecture and you notice mistakes are being made, it is your job to point them out and make sure you are jotting down the right thing.

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