mathNEWS Issue 90.5: Friday, November 15, 2002

This Lecture Sucks!

What are classes coming to these days? I constantly flip between lectures, and all I see are the same boring information I already read about in the text book. Don't get me started on the text book. Now, sitting in class you either have your posterior on some god-awful on the buns modelled plastic chair, or sitting on some seat so comfortable that the second the lecture starts and you hear that monotonic voice from the front of the room you're already in dream land.

And another thing. Sometimes after spending all night time managing to get your assignments done, no matter what type of chair you are sitting in, you still end up falling asleep. Now, either you got the neck-problem position (leaning back in your chair having your head hang back), putting your neck in a most unnatural position, and sleeping, or you fall forward onto your notes, using your binder, arm, or fist as pillow. This of course leaves a lovely red mark some where on your face, just so everyone knows how tired you are.

But sometimes you try and pay attention to what is going on in the hopes that you might actually learn something. That point in time is when you see on the board something like f of x which is x to the power x over x. But x is a parameter and x is a random variable. Or you see a summation, but for the life you of you can figure out what they are summing over. Or the prof just happens to really like using the define as symbol anywhere he can, even if it makes no sense. That when you wish you had a direct line to the notation police.

If bad notation wasn't enough, there's that guy sitting over there. He is asking a question. You know the prof has already answered it. Most the class was paying enough attention to understand what is going on even though the notation sucks. But this guy's going to ask his dumb question anyway. He's not even going to understand the answer when the prof give it, and this will end up being the section that's is behind. I think it is time to switch lectures again.

Lecture Surfer



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