[Chad]

First-Year Academic Success
Part 1: Attending Lectures
By Paul Antiperovitch and Sarah Allison

Whether you like it or not, almost all courses contain midterms and exams. Even scarier is the fact that tests account for 60-100% of your final mark. As a result, there is less emphasis on course work and lots of emphasis on examinations. Needless to say, test taking strategies you employ are paramount to your success in the course.

1. Attending Lectures
Class attendance is normally high at the start of the course. It gradually decreases until midterms. You are always strongly encouraged to attend as many classes as possible. Apart from the obvious learning advantage of coming to class, there are a number of reasons for attending:

• The professor often mentions information that does not appear within lecture notes and the textbook. These often make great test questions and are mostly used to reward students attending class.

• The professor often presents practice questions that aren’t found on the lecture outline or online. These questions often closely resemble the ones that will appear on the test. No professor hesitates to reward attending students because a low class attendance can damage their reputation and importance of their field of interest.

• The professor will remember your face, which will establish a very good relationship. This can be useful for future questions, letters of recommendation, or job opportunities.

• The human mind consists of the conscious and subconscious components. The results of various famous psychological studies strongly suggested that the subconscious mind remembers information even if the conscious mind loses focus. When you study, you may find the ability to recall information from lectures as you move through test material. Therefore, a lack of focus is not a good reason to skip class.

• Professors often mention the sections not covered on the exam and midterms. This is often posted online, but not always! Furthermore, they always hint at what you do and do not need to know as they go through the course material. Narrowing the focus of test material will save quite some energy and time for students attending class, which is quite an advantage over those who don’t.

Many professors post lecture notes before each class. These lecture notes usually contain brief point form bullets of topics discussed. You are strongly encouraged to print these notes for class and take notes throughout the lecture. If you do not like to write notes, I suggest you occasionally write down a few words – this will help you set mental markers that will be quite valuable in recalling lecture material while studying.

[Amara]

yup im gona atend each n ever class!!

[lorend]

Although Paul is talking specifically about science classes here, I'd like to say it is more or less the same for all faculties.

So, go to all of your lectures if possible, and follow the tips that Paul listed and you'll do well!

[Amara]

paul?
isnt it chad?
loll
n e ways omgsh i hope i survive first yr science!

[lorend]

Nope, Paul wrote this. Chad posted it though. He actually posts all of the articles because of his special presidential powers.

[Kevin]

in a class of 1200, only 40 will go???

[Chad]

That's probably an exaggeration.

And yes, it was posted by Paul (see the "By _____ " under the titles of each article). Unfortunately the system on here is slightly complicated and I have to re-post the articles staff write onto the homepage myself.. so they appear to be posted by me, but are written by others in the team

[ingénieur.xo]

lol it said 40% of 1200, so 480 of the 1200 would be attending by midterm.

[zoskek]

when is midterm?

[lorend]

About six weeks into school, roughly mid October.

Specifics depend on the prof, though.

[babyxtc]

midterms start oct ish last till nov..then exams
and f or term 2 midterms are like after reading week i believe then till march ish then exams

midterms are evil >=[ !!!!

but yeah the tips are good ones. profs do throw out hints in class. attend them if you can. make sure u know wut other times there are for ur class (if there are any, usuallly for 1st yrs there more then 1 class) so if u miss it, u can go to a later lecture : ]

[Sanduni]

Hey! My question isn't really related to this topic, but I would really appreciate what you think..Im going into first year and Im taking math,bio,chem,psych and physics first semester and my timetable is like 3 lectures one after the other, each 50 mins long- five days a week!! I'm just wondering if having 3 consecutive lectures would be pretty hectic/ too much to handle?

[Kevin]

I wouldn't think so, I mean they are 50 min each so 3 consecutive lectures would only be 2.5 hours.

[lorend]

I prefer having consecutive lectures than breaks myself; I find I can get more done in a day that way.