<p>Jeeeeez, 600 students?</p>
<p>“Classes” like that are why I chose to go to a small school…</p>
<p>I’ve never really had a problem grasping things in big classes (never had one with 600 though, jeez that’s big. my biggest was I think 375 intro freshman psych) if the professor is a good teacher. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big or small class, if the prof. sucks it’ll probably be hard to grasp even if the material isn’t really that hard unless you’re just naturally smart. And if the prof. is good, then it’ll be easy to grasp things whether the class has 25 or 250.</p>
<p>I asked my roommate, who was doing rather well in his humbio classes, why he even bothered to going to the early morning classes, and he gave me this great answer:</p>
<p>That’s where I study my material so that I don’t have to cram later.</p>
<p>If only I could apply this to myself *sigh</p>
<p>This is craziness. I did poorly (60%) on my first developmental psychology exam, partially because I missed two weeks of class due to an injury and a couple more due to a stomach virus. Of course, that made me feel unconfident and I was thinking I was going to fail every class, have to drop out of college, etc. </p>
<p>I spent all of my spring break studying for my kinesiology mid term because it was an absolutely MUST pass, and I did good with an 82%. I should have done better, but it put me over the edge and raised my confidence quite a bit from failing the first developmental psychology exam. I still expected to do poorly on the second developmental psychology exam, somewhere between 54%-70%, but got an 88% instead!</p>
<p>Look, Im at McGill and what you said sounds exactly like me. I would keep getting distracted by everything and would think in my head that I could just read up on the lectures later. At one point I didn’t go to class for nearly a month. Near the end, I crammed for a week straight 16 hours a day and that was still not enough. I failed 2 out of 3 classes. </p>
<p>The first thing you need to do is to realize, FULLY realize, that you have a problem. Don’t just think that its something simple that you can fix because something IS causing you to fail. Most of the people here have given short, snappy remarks on how simple it is. You can’t underestimate your problem. I did the same thing; I thought “Oh, well I’ll just go to class and that’s that. It’s really not that hard.” But after a few days, I was back to procrastinating and missing class. </p>
<p>The main problem that you and I have is that we are in high school mode. In high school, we were forced to be there, so we might as well have made the best of the time and done our work. All we had to do was be smart and bs our way through. Well people like us need to drop our high school mindset and slowly become more self reliant and mature. This isn’t something that can happen magically in a week but hopefully we’ll both get there. </p>
<p>Another thing is to really try and talk to your friends and parents. My parents turned out to be pretty understanding even though I dreaded until the final day when I would have to tell them. Try not to think about it; just sit down with your parents and let them know what’s going on. It can’t get any worse now. I thought my dad was going to literally kill me but he didn’t even blink when I told him. He said that he had a suspicion that I would be in this predicament since I’ve always been a huge procrastinator. </p>
<p>Good luck das; hell, we both need it…</p>
<p>^I don’t go to any classes at McGill and I still get good grades.</p>
<p>I learn nothing in class. My lecturers are all boring civil servants. Crappy Canadian education.</p>
<p>Start going to class and borrow a friend’s notes for the classes that you’ve already missed.</p>
<p>Stop making excuses. You’re at university to GO to university. Lectures, classes, tuts, professors. Otherwise you could save yourself the hundred grand and read books all day.</p>
<p>18-20 hours for studying is nothing. I studied atleast 40 hours for my chem test</p>
<p>For psych you have to apply the terms to reality. Not just know them definition wise…This is not history where everyone know the basics of 1776. -_-';;</p>
<p>If you don’t make it to class, go to the professor’s office hours but if you ask a question that s/he mentioned in class then you’ll be embarrassed.</p>
<p>Well I ended up passing 4 out of my 5 classes. Not bad I guess… but my GPA has fallen to a 2.4 :(</p>
<p>I said thats life… ridin high in april… shot down in may</p>
<p>Then that low gpa should get you motivated for the next semester to do better. You still have a couple of years to pull it up to at least a 3.0. Try hard for that A.</p>