I disagree on this point. I skipped classes left, right and centre. I'm sure it annoyed the hell out of my lecturers, but I was spending my time doing things that turned out to be much more valuable in the long run.
For example, I did actual research! By the time I was finished with my undergraduate programme, I had enough "real" research experience to gain entry to a very good PhD programme in another country. This was coming from a small university with no particular research reputation outside of a few select areas.
So skipping classes worked for me. Just don't do it to the point where you think you know what is going on in the class, when you really don't.
I hate lecturers who take attendance. This isn't preschool, I can make decisions for myself. If I feel like I can do without that one class or feel like something else is more pressing (due project?) then I should be able to act on it. The whole idea of getting points for just being in class is silly anyway. You get grades to be able to rate your own knowledge, not as gifts or punishment. Thus if you've comprehended the subject fully you should get an A and if not, you should get less. Being in class during lecture has nothing to do with comprehension.
Glad it worked out for you, but in the scheme of things the amount of class time per week is really very little. Where I did my undergrad (RIT) each class met about 4-5 hours per week, and you took 4-5 classes a semester. So that means between 16-25 hours of actual class time in a week.
That's true, but sometimes the idea of sitting in a classroom for an hour or two to listen to something you have absolutely no interest in is just too much effort :)
Good for you that this strategy worked for you, but as others have commented, this relies on your ability to efficiently recognize classes you don't need to attend. The penalty for attending class when you didn't need to is a few hours a weeks spent in suboptimal times, but you can still work on other things at that time. The penalty for missing a class where you needed to be... well, that's your grade, buddy.
I recommend erring on the side of conservatism, as it's easy and attractive to self-deceive into an overinflated concept of what we would have done with our time (hack vs TV+videogames+internet)
This is like buying a ticket and then skipping the flight. You can't tell me that the 9-12 hours a week (max) you skipped classes made the difference between getting into grad school and not, you are merely rationalizing.
That really depends what the objective of going to a university is:
Mine was actually to understand. This is largely incompatible with the notion of covering a large amount of material which you need to regurgitate near-verbatim in an exam. That kind of environment essentially reduces any subject to a memory recall game. I decided I wanted to come away with a very rich understanding of fewer things, and my exam grades mattered less to me.
So, it's not like I didn't go to any classes. I just didn't go to any which didn't really increase my understanding. If it was the sort of thing I could just read out of the text book and memorise, then I would do that instead of wasting my time sitting in a lecture. Instead, I worked on projects (both credit and non-credit varieties). I went and sat in the computer science tea room with a stack of papers and I just read them. I asked academics about things that I read and didn't understand. The most common answer was usually "Hrm. That is interesting. I don't know the answer to that, but there's a paper by so-and-so that might explain it!" - result! Print another paper and head back to the tea room.
After two or so years of this, I had a pretty darned good foundation in my sub-field of computer science. Enough that I managed to work on some novel projects, which I wrote up and published in my fourth year. By my third year I had managed to convince the department to drop a bunch of course requirements in favour of letting me do a project worth an equivalent number of credits. I actually did all of this in the lecture time slots.
The alternative would have been sitting through introduction to {programming, algorithms, self-harm} for years, getting bored, and probably just dropping out to go earn real money cutting code.
So really, who got the better deal? My classmates who digested the material at exactly the rate it was delivered? I think I got the better deal, because I actually made full use of being in a university environment.
And as I said, I believe that was what got me into a very good PhD programme. I got my money's worth.
So, skipping classes is fine as long as you are willing to take responsibility for your own education.
> The alternative would have been sitting through introduction to {programming, algorithms, self-harm} for years, getting bored, and probably just dropping out to go earn real money cutting code.
Ok, there it is. Attending class seems to cause you anxiety. This leads me to believe you have ADD. Maybe I'm just projecting.
Uh, sure, if by "rationalizing" you mean "explaining why my opinion is valid". You're make it sound like I have a drug habit or something. I skipped some classes in university, I'm glad I did, and everything worked out for the best. What is there to rationalise?
> Ok, there it is. Attending class seems to cause you anxiety. This leads me to believe you have ADD. Maybe I'm just projecting.
Erm, no. No such diagnosis here. Perhaps the off-the-cuff "self-harm" reference threw you off. It was a joke.
I certainly have a low tolerance for boredom, but that's not the same as "ADD". I certainly have no problems concentrating on things if I need to. I've always been a very busy person, and so my time is precious to me. If I'm doing something when I could otherwise be making more efficient use of my time, then I will not enjoy doing it.
And this psychiatric-diagnosis-over-the-internet thing is a bit weird. Who said anything about anxiety? I used the word bored. I used my 4 years of university to my best advantage, and in that situation "going to classes" didn't figure very highly in the heirarchy of things that were useful to me.
I don't know, I typed a long response but I can't really express what I want to say. I didn't diagnose you.
The ability to concentrate very intensively for hours on difficult material is not a common trait (in the population at large).
Feeling 'bored' enough that you avoid going to class despite all the extra work this implies, and the grade implications, is not a common trait (among people who hope to go to a good graduate school).
However, for someone with ADD, both hyperfocusing on things they find very interesting, and avoiding situations that require sustained attention on anything that they don't find especially interesting would be almost a given. More then a given, these are symptoms.
Finally, something can be a valid explanation of why an action was the right one, but still be a rationalization if it doesn't take into account the true motives behind the decision to take the action. There is certainly a school of thought that says basically all explanations (both before and after a decision) are at least in part rationalizations, since we do not know our true motivations at all.
So I believe you 100% when you say you "used your time to your best advantage", but I believe you came to this course of action, at least partly, to give yourself an excuse for avoiding unpleasant feelings of boredom, even though it is clearly expected for students to attend class.
Finally, you continually state it as though you had to choose one, read up on research or go to classes you found boring.
Here is why your explanation doesn't convince me:
Classes take up 12-16 hours per week, so skipping them gives you 12-16 hours of extra time studying important things. Awesome! That is a good thing, I'm not being sarcastic.
Add commute time, meals on campus, conversations and other crap, now we are at 14-28 hours per week, which is sizable.
However, sometimes you can't skip a class, do to tests or turning in papers, so subtract a few hours per week from your 'time gained'. Maybe we are at 10-24 hours per week gained now. (Guessing around 4 hours combined of class time + overhead of commuting etc that is unavoidable per week)
In most classes you could sit and read whatever you want the entire time, while still benefiting from being there and recognized by the professor (good if you need anything from him later, also this unfairly effects your grade) and are aware of homework, readings, and at least partially of discussions and what the professor cares about. You may also find that you are more interested than you thought you were, and the class is no longer considered 'wasted time'. Once you take away time 'reading what you want' in the lecture, and 'unexpected interest in subject' time, maybe you are at 2-18 hours gained now. (Guessing around 6-8 hours per week can be spent reading what you want, unexpected interest in a subject cannot be estimated.)
Now subtract any commute time you do regardless of class attendance. For example, if you are a commuter and you have to attend one class, go to the library, or talk to a professor, you have to do the full commute regardless of class attendance. I estimated between 1 and 8 hours of commuting time per week. If you end up going to campus every day, or you live on or near the campus anyway, you are down to between 0 and 10 hours of 'time wasted' per week. You cannot say that even the maximum possible 10 hours gained per week is some kind of deal breaker to studying on your own.
So that is my thought process when I read your initial post. Then I thought, if this person isn't really gaining much time to study by skipping class, why do they feel so strongly about it?
So an unconvincing explanation of why, a statement that those classes are 'boring', a statement that if you had to attend those classes you probably would have quit school (they must be pretty unpleasant to you!) all adds up a high likelihood of ADD to me. Your analysis may be different, but given the limited facts I have available I am convinced. This is not a diagnosis, merely a statement of how it seems to me.
For example, I did actual research! By the time I was finished with my undergraduate programme, I had enough "real" research experience to gain entry to a very good PhD programme in another country. This was coming from a small university with no particular research reputation outside of a few select areas.
So skipping classes worked for me. Just don't do it to the point where you think you know what is going on in the class, when you really don't.