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Students who dont go to lectures/seminars

Why not ? You pay like £9000 a year. At uni I see students who go into the lecture and walk out half way and claim "oh I cba this lecures boring". Some dont even come in.

Why ?

Im sure most people have grown out of the " Too cool for school" attitude or have they ?

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Reply 1

KJane

It's part being lazy, and a sense of entitlement that as they are paying for it, they're fully aware of what they're paying for and feel like it's not a big deal/their right to miss them.

It bugs me when friends or classmates ask me to sign them in for lectures and seminars when they can't be asked/too hungover to come in. But otherwise I don't care, they're the ones usually limited when they don't know the material for the assignments.

Reply 2

Liquid Swordsman

You're paying £9000 a year for the degree, not for the knowledge or learning or whatever

Reply 3

Pave I Ment

Original post by KJane

Doesn't make any sense to me, if you are paying 9k a year you are going to want to get your money's worth.

The entitlement thing is tosh everyone knows that you have to work its just some people are lazy its not that they think they literally can do it without working.

Reply 4

Machop

Last year for one module I missed every single lecture and seminar and still ended up getting 76% overall.

Reply 5

rachel.h

Some people I knew saw it as they were just buying a degree because they need one to get where they want to be. They weren't at uni because they were interested in the subject matter.

A lot of lecturers also post their entire lecture slides and resources online, which makes people think they didn't have to bother going.

Sometimes it's because they don't need to - they've chosen their essay title already so the lecture may be irrelevant.

Some people are lazy.

Some lectures aren't even worth going to. Having a few journals and articles in your name doesn't make you a useful lecturer.

Reply 6

Xyloid

Because I learn **** all from boring, monotone, old miserable people who have no way of making my subjects interesting.

I have always maintained that if I was given all of the course material in one place I can sit down on my own with a cup of tea and the internet and pass my course.

Then i remembered Blackboard exists which allows for just this.

I averaged 75% last year so it seems to be working.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 7

alexschmalex

Because I went to bed too late last night and woke up 3 hours after the last one - usually what happens to me. All the notes are online and I have nice friends who help me catch up, so bleh

Reply 8

Rob da Mop

If you know you're not going to pay attention or you're too tired or you know that the lecturer isn't a good one, why would you go? Particularly if it's not compulsory.

Reply 9

chicforever_

I have this one module that I haven't gone to once since starting semester 2. Nearly every time I went to it during semester 1, I fell asleep. It's a good module (in terms of assignments anyway not the lecture content...) however it's common sense and has nothing to do with the assignments (a module that is 100% coursework). The fact that it's a 10am doesn't help either.

I only don't go in if I know it'll be absolutely pointless or I can catch up on online.

Reply 10

kumori

Because sometimes the lecturer starts it with - I don't know the subject I'm teaching myself... Other times because you have to focus sooooo hard on staying awake so you learn nothing and sometimes I'm to lazy to get out of bed

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Reply 11

.snowflake.

Original post by kumori

Always good when that happens. I've had a lecturer go 'This is probably about the right time to tell you that my degree is actually in physics'. I've had lecturers whose accents are so strong, or they mumble that badly, that despite sitting near the front of the lecture theatre, I still cannot make head nor tail of what's being said.

Reply 12

rosee92

I'm an MA student and I've missed lectures and seminars before... And I still got a 1st class degree. There were several reasons:
- I'd already picked my essay topic and that lecture wasn't relevant to it - altho mostly your essay topics will crossover with others so don't use it as an excuse always :wink:

- I found the format boring and uninteresting so studied it myself - my social policy module was tedious and obvious. I skipped most of it and pulled out a first. My Russian politics module was interesting content wise but it was on a far away campus and the lecturer was dull as. Again, I learnt it myself and got a first.
- it was something I'd studied before: in 1st year a lot of what I'd studied at A level got repeated so my 9 & 10am lectures repeating the same stuff could be missed once in a while.
- there was an opportunity for picking up an extra shift at work instead (4 hours pay vs 3 hours procrastination and 1 hour messing with my phone)
- I decided spending the time doing another assignment would be more useful... Especially around deadline time! Most lecturers understand this.
- other reasons like illness, away, once the buses stopped for snow...
- sometimes I just couldn't be bothered. This is rare, if I skip something it's rarely because I really just CBA.

In the mood for essays, soz :tongue:

Reply 13

tania<3

Some people just don't learn well from lectures. I actually do, so I try and go to as many as possible but at the end of the day I'm still going to learn everything through the lecture slides during revision... So if I don't go to the actual lectures its not a big deal.

Besides, only 2 out of 5 years for medicine are lecture based, the rest is all clinical so it honestly isn't a big deal for me :dontknow:

Reply 14

WarriorInAWig

I studied when it was all £3000 a year. :P However, although I missed lectures, it was very few in comparison to the whole course. Maths is just about okay because you can go on Wikipedia and find plenty of worked examples online. We were all given course notes and gaps could be filled in with friends copies later in the day. I too had hard to understand accents and lecturers who really did seem like they were talking about another dimension so sometimes not being there was just as gainful as being present in the lecture theatre.

Reply 15

askew116

I have to say that this is an issue that infuriates me (and my lecturer).

I'm on a very small course, with only 16 of us, and out of those 16, I'm one of only 4 students who turn up regularly. Our lectures consist of us 4, plus one or two others who randomly turn up.

I understand that my course (Film Production) has a lot of practical content, and this particular course is exclusively assessed from essays, reports, seminars and practical work (films!). However I'm talking about the theory modules, in which fairly technical content is taught, and most people miss out entirely (there's one who I've seen 3 times since September!!!), then they wonder why they fail the essay assignments.

I'm also the Course Rep, which leaves me as the guy stuck in the middle with 'complaints' from students, which I feel are ridiculous but I have to put to the Course Leader (i.e. We don't think we should have to do ... essay), and tutors moaning at me that they put in a lot of work preparing lectures, and arranging guest speakers, only to be disheartened when only us regular 4 turn up, which is highly embarrassing for them. Also, our tutors are genuinely worried about their jobs, with the uni looking seriously at discontinuing our course. (That last complaint is only aired when me and the tutor talk informally, of course).

In short, I've been amazed at the attitude of some students, that they feel they deserve the degree without putting in the work. I get that not all courses are structured the same as mine, but at the end of the day, we're all paying in excess of £8k/year, and I have to ask what's the point if you're going to coast your way through.

Reply 16

member403966

Some lecturers are tremendously ****. I turned up to one of my modules once and never returned. I averaged 87%. It's all about the lecturer, for me anyway. If I can't take any of it in because of the lecturer's boring style and monotone voice just reading off the powerpoint I'm better off staying at home working at a faster rate by myself. For others, I attend every single lecture as I know they'll explain things better than a textbook ever could.

Reply 17

discomposure

I don't really learn much from lectures, I have to go over the recordings in my own time anyway so the way I see it it really doesn't matter too much if I miss one. So if I'm feeling like crap or really need some sleep then I won't go.

I learn a lot more frome playing back a recorded lecture, since you can pause it to take proper notes, go back over things you missed/didn't quite understand and can do some extra reading/research alongside it and incorporate that into your notes too which I find a nice time saver. Sure, occasionally the recordings fail or whatever so in those situations I might be missing some useful info not on the slides, but if you do enough reading that gap is filled.

Seminars / tutorials are different though, I try to attend all of them and I attend all of my labs and workshops.

Aslong as people are doing the work I don't see why they should HAVE to attend lectures tbh and if they're not doing the work then it'll usually show in their grades.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 18

lozzielizzie

My course have no choice we have to turn up unless we are ill. If we don't it doesn't look good on us, this is partly due to the profession we want to go into which our course is fully about. I only missed on lecture and that was only due to having too attend a test to get on the course due to being on another course and get a chance on the course am now on.

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Reply 19

Huskaris

I got a 2:1 with a 30% attendance in year 1, 20% attendance in year 2 and 0% attendance in year 3.

In my case the people were exceptionally dull and the lectures were even worse. Plus I lived like 45 minutes from campus.

Don't hate on people that can not go and still do better than you, that's jealousy ;-).