<p>If the grades are o.k., then I really think it’s the kid’s business. I know my daughter skipped classes all the time --and she ended up graduating phi beta kappa. She simply knew which classes she needed to attend, and she made appropriate judgments --and of course she knew whether or not a prof was taking attendance. </p>
<p>I literally had classes in law school that I barely attended at all – I could get away with that in law school because the curriculum is pretty set, so I could do the reading and use study guides to master the material. In some cases it was deliberate, because I had some profs who bored or confused me so much that I realized that I was better off staying away. </p>
<p>I have also had profs who I greatly admired and whose words were like gold – I would never want to miss their lectures --and I know my d. felt the same way about some of her profs. So your daughter may be making a selective decision based on the quality of the course. Keep in mind that there may be enough info posted online related to the class (syllabus, reading assignments, course notes) that she doesn’t feel the need to attend a given class.</p>
<p>Amesie, since your d mentioned this to you, I imagine she felt that you probably wouldn’t have read her the riot act about it. With strong midterm grades, she seems to be in control of her academics, so all is well. </p>
<p>Two of my kids have almost never missed a class in college; one attended less religiously, and had the GPA to show for it (still satisfactory, but not what it could have been). One of the main tasks in going off to school is learning how to balance responsibilities and enjoyment. It surprises me a bit that so many professors do take attendance, because I don’t know how much of that there was waaaaay back in the 1970s when I was in school.</p>
<p>By this point in their lives, as a parent, I don’t expect to have any say beyond not funding college for somebody who’s not in good academic standing. If a professor allows a certain number of absences, how a student uses them is really her own business. </p>
<p>As an instructor, however, I plan classes so that there are plenty of natural consequences for skippers. I won’t take late work, and I won’t let students make up quizzes or any in-class work. Additionally. there’s always an exam scheduled for the class period before a holiday and some kind of graded work scheduled for the first class after a break.</p>
<p>Agree nicksmtmom. I can recall having instructors with such heavy accents that listening to them “teach” for 75 minutes was time wasted. As for scheduling important graded work for the days before and after a break, as ordinarylives suggests, I am grateful my d’s profs are mindful of the prohibitive plane fares around those times.</p>
<p>As a university professor, I would EXPECT my kids to skip class selectively. Sometimes it’s for their own good. And they are adults and have to figure it out for themselves. They might make a few errors and get nipped in the butt, or they may find the opposite. Its the outcoems that matter; we parents should not be micromanaging the process (and if we need that level of control, why on earth did we send them off to be alone?).</p>
<p>I’m surprised you mentioned that you teach college. Do you really believe every one of your colleagues always offers a class that is more useful than everything else? That a student can not actually benefit from selectively missing a class to attend to something else? It just doesn’t make sense to me. </p>
<p>Some of the best students know how to use their courses, classes, and full college experience to maximize their benefit. I am actually stunned someone who teaches in such an environment would think otherwise.</p>
<p>D’s pretty religious about going to class, and has the grades to prove it. But this year one of her classes is taught by a “confuser” – he manages to confuse and muddle up what she understood from the book and the readings. She went to class carefully through the first exam, found that her careful reading of the book and readings was sufficient, got close to a perfect score, and then wasn’t as careful to go to class. When she did go, she said she often listened with half and ear, and got some other stuff done. She got another very high A on the second midterm, so her approach seems to work.</p>
<p>I had a confuser who tried to teach Statistical Methods for Economics when I was an undergrad, and it was a required course. Very luckily I had happened to like statistics, and had taken a full year of stats through the math department earlier; a much more rigorous course. That was a blessing, because this guy was probably the worst garbler of information about statistics I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how he was when he used them himself, but his explanations were often wrong, and his examples often didn’t work. I couldn’t stop attending – it was a very small class – but I did stop trying to listen, and did just fine, and much better than some of the poor students for whom this was a first course in statistics.</p>
<p>Younger s skipped a class before the exam b/c he had three HUGE tests and had been up studying for some ridiculous amount of time. It is possible the professor gave some instruction re: using the blue book vs paper, as DS did the opposite of what everyone else did, and it almost had a big impact on his grade. Scared the bejeezus outta him!</p>
<p>I skipped quite a few of those 8am psychology classes. Primarily because it was at 8AM! My grade suffered.
I made sure I told my D of this past experience…hoping she would “catch on”. She has.
First piece of advice- avoid the 8 am classes as Freshmen. And just be really sure you can afford the price of a bad grade.</p>
<p>starbright, and others who offer examples of bad, counter-productive classes: My D is not skipping her classes because she already knows the material, or because going to class is otherwise a waste of time, or because the professor is confusing or otherwise bad. So far as I can tell, she likes her classes and is learning in them. And we most definitely are not talking about large lecture classes–enrollments in her classes are between 6 and 25 students. So do I think skipping class could never be a good decision? No. But the factors that might make skipping class a good decision are not present in my D’s case at the moment.</p>
With strong midterm grades, she seems to be in control of her academics, so all is well. </p>