• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• PART 1: THE START
• PART 2: THE CLASS
  • First Week Action Plan
  • Tips for Lecture Notes
  • Why Prepare? Attend?
• PART 3: THE EXAM
• PART 4: THE PAPER
• PART 5: THE LAST MONTH
• AFTERWORD
• READERS' REVIEWS
• MEET THE AUTHORS

chapter 6

Why Prepare? Why Attend? Why Participate?

If you're anything like most college students, you'll find yourself asking yourself from time to time "Why prepare for class?" "Why attend lecture?" "Why go to discussion section -- and once there, why participate?" Sometimes these questions are genuine requests for information. You're short on time. You're juggling four or five courses. Not to mention a job -- and a life. You want to know what the relative value is (translation: what the grade value is) of doing each of these class activities.

At other times, though, such questions are expressions of apathy, disillusionment, or exasperation. Why slave over the reading, if the professor is going to present the material better in lecture -- and more to the point, without any effort on your part? Why make all the lectures, if the professor tends just to summarize the reading, or to do the very same problems that you've already polished off at home? And why waste your time with the discussion (or quiz or drill) sections if the TA is only going to review the stuff for a third time, or answer half-brained questions from students with only one oar in the water? Excellent questions -- all. To which you have the right to an answer. If not from your professor, then from us...

WHY PREPARE?

In most college courses you're assigned things to do outside class. Every week. Without fail. Maybe reading, or problem sets, or sentences to translate. College professors sometimes call this 'preparation for class,' but that's really just a glorified way of talking about what you might call homework. The only difference between preparation and homework is that, much of the time, college instructors don't collect or grade these assignments. Hey, for most of us three or four pieces of graded material per student per semester is plenty enough grading.

This does not mean that there's no value in preparing. Preparation for class is not some throw-away activity or something to pass the time while the Internet is down. It's actually the main part of your learning experience in any college course. Yeah, you thought that listening to the professor yakking away was where it's at. But the lectures are intended to take up less than ½ of your learning time. The bulk of your learning is supposed to happen as you work on your own, studying for tests and writing papers (which we'll be talking about in the next two Parts) -- but more to the point here, when you prepare for class.

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