You are absolutely right. My prof refers to this as the T-zone.
I sit front and center because I am SHORT. I can’t see through people. If it were up to me I’d sit in the back during algebra, for sure. I have seen many people with empty heads but I’ve never seen any people with transparent heads. BTW, correlation does not equal causation. Two factors can correlate but not actually be related to each other. I have had this drilled into me. (The example I got from two separate professors was this: Ice cream sales and drownings are strongly correlated. What do the two have to do with each other? Nothing, except that it’s summer and therefore it’s hot and people eat more ice cream and people swim more, so more people drown.)
I figure I paid for these classes and by God I’m going to get what I paid for. The only thing that got me through statistics was showing up for class. And I would have had a much harder time with biology if I hadn’t shown up, even though both semesters were lectures straight from the book. Some of that material I really needed to both hear and read. I still blew it in the lab, but I got through okay.
I have been known to cut class, don’t get me wrong. I’m no angel. But I am careful as to when and how and what classes I miss, because some of them, I just can’t miss without a reason.
As a student, I have to disagree. It doesn’t look like the study took disability into account.
I am a decent student, and I have to sit closer to the back. I’m extremely farsighted, and even with glasses, it’s very uncomfortable for me to sit in front. I’ve gone to school with hearing-impaired students who had to accommodate that.
I know, it’s kinda off topic. Sorry.
Robin
Hey Dude, I know where your coming from. I hated going to class. freshman and sophmore year can be a pain with all the required classes. But once you get to Jr and Sr you can pick classes that don’t require attendance. I do agree that foreign language classes are something where you should be there, however. Are you in the class becuase you want to take the language, or becuase you need to fill a distribution requirement? Not to offend any foreign language teachers out there, but if you want to learn the language, classes arn’t going to do it. You can learn far more in a three week immersion camp, than you can in 6 years of a normal class. A lot of colleges have immersion programs, that will fill the same distribution as the foreign language class, the draw back being that they cost a lot.
as to the other discussion, it depends on how you define good student. There is a different personality type between the the front row and back corner students, but often the smartest people sat in the back corner. These were the students most likely to skip class or forget to do homework, but in terms of learning the material, often did far better than the front row-ers.
*Originally posted by msrobyn *
**As a student, I have to disagree. It doesn’t look like the study took disability into account.I am a decent student, and I have to sit closer to the back. I’m extremely farsighted, and even with glasses, it’s very uncomfortable for me to sit in front. I’ve gone to school with hearing-impaired students who had to accommodate that.
I know, it’s kinda off topic. Sorry.**
Good point, to both you and whiterabbit.
I’d like to counter that, however, by saying that if you didn’t care about the class, you wouldn’t sit in front, disability notwithstanding. You’d sit wherever you had easy access to the exit, or you’d rely on your university’s disabled students’ assistance program.
whiterabbit, I do know about correlation and causation, because that’s exactly what I teach. In fact, I used that exact example myself in class this week. Twice.
wolfman, I can’t say I agree with your last paragraph. In my classes, the ones who sit in the back aren’t the smart ones- if anything, they’re the smartasses.
First of all, I already said that correlation does not equal causation. Second, I also said that there were good students who did NOT sit front/center.
wolfman–this is how I define a good student: A student who does well on tests and papers, and who contributes to the class discussion. How do you define a good student?
I believe in attending all of your classes. What the professor teaches should be what you are examined on, plus a mountain of reading. That being said, this one professor I had did not believe that. His exams were totally irrelevant to the homework, the textbook and the classroom lectures. It was entirely based on whether you had paid working experience in Java, which I didn’t.