Why You Should Skip Class: Group Conformity

“I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to go. If I've encountered some unnecessary resistance that's because most of the traffic is going the other way.” ― Edward Abbey

When I was young, I'd always listen to what adults told me to do because I had a strong belief that they knew best. But as I grew up, I learned about the people who changed the world and more often than not, they were those who would take risks and challenge the status quo. The way we do a lot of things in society is usually built upon the prior experience of those before us, and no doubt, there is an obvious merit to this. But is the status quo really the best way? Should we blindly settle with what worked fine in the past?

In thinking about learning, we need to put these questions into perspective. Sure, we can do what our institutions tell us and go to class, do the readings, and be a "good" student. But who's to say that we've reached the best methodology? Education has always been evolving, and one thing that hold us back is group conformity. The Asch Experiment is an illustration of how easy it is for us to settle down with what people tell us is the "right" way of doing things even if we might know otherwise.

Why You Should Skip Class: Active Learning

We tend to retain more information when we exert more mental effort. [1]

When we are in class and listening to the lecturer speak, we are trying to follow his thought processes and his pace. But when we sit down with a textbook and try to study for an exam, we try to understand the concept at our own pace. You'll notice that when you study by yourself, you slow down, speed up, pause, skim, and sometimes repeat different parts of the text. That's because not everything in a book or a paragraph will have the exact same importance to you. And if that doesn't describe you when you study, then you probably notice that you often read entire paragraphs without knowing what you just read.

This jumping around the text is that extra step your brain is taking to isolate the parts you don't know so well and really commit the material to memory. Think about all those times you've skipped many weeks of classes but in the end you cram like crazy and still end up with a decent score. That intense day or two before the exam is when you perform your most active learning. So think about that the next time you're dozing off in class.

[1] C. Diemand-Yauman (2011). "Fortune favors the bold (and the Italicized): effects of disfluency on educational outcomes". Cognition.

Dealing With Difficult People: Repeat & Label

Angry people are hard to deal with.

The following is a post by someone else (artsci10, not me) from LawStudents.ca that talks about dealing with difficult people:

I deal with adult temper tantrums the same way I deal with children's temper tantrums - a system called repeat and label.

It follows like this:
Angry man in the grocery store: This line isn't moving at all because that fucking cashier doesn't know the prices!!
Me (repeating): She doesn't know the prices?
Angry man: She doesn't.
Me (labeling): That's frustrating.

OR

Cyclist whose just been cut off: That driver almost ran me over!! I'm going to go key his car!
Me (repeating): He almost ran you over?
Cyclist: Ya, just now.
Me (labeling): Drivers need to be more careful.

Works every time.

Why You Should Skip Class: The Data Stream Argument

Stay home or go to school?

Throughout years of school, I've always sought the most efficient way to study. And I decided that my ability to learn from the textbook was good enough such that I have to weigh the utility of going to class against my self-learning abilities. Eventually, I realized that it was almost always more efficient to study alone with the book rather than to attend lecture (with some exceptions). One justification for this is the data stream argument based on a measure of words per minute.

The Wikipedia page on Words Per Minute (WPM) gives us a few well-sourced metrics. Audio books are typically around 150-160 WPM. We can assume this is representative of optimal comprehension speed while listening because that's what audio books are for; slide presentations are typically slower than this. 

Contrast this with reading where the average adult reads at 250 to 300 WPM, while proofreading at around 180-200 WPM. If we factor in the commuting time it takes to go to school and all the miscellaneous questions and pauses that occur in lecture, the answer is clear. As long as the content in lecture is reflected well enough in a book, you should probably skip class.

Update: Some have mentioned that they often have issues of comprehension when reading. And when this happens, they often have to re-read things. Two subsequent posts attempt to answer this concern: Never Read Anything More Than Once and Active Learning.

Don't forget to smell the roses

stop and smell the roses

I was looking through some of my old posts on LawStudents.ca and found the following:

I think it's important to realize that it never really hurts for you to take some time to slow down and smell the roses. The extra year in undergrad that I took was invaluable in landing me an amazing job upon graduation. Some of the people that I met in that year have become close friends and our relationships are priceless and will continue to be. After I graduated, I had to take a year off and work before I can attend law school (because I didn't do my LSAT during my undergrad). I took this extra time to learn about industry, the market, personal investment, and how to set up the rest of my adult life. This knowledge allowed me to build bridges and communicate with people from all walks of life. Some of these people are amazing people who will guide me and build me up as my life continues.

Life is a journey not a race, so don't forget to slow down, smell the roses, and just enjoy being alive.

Taking Charge of Learning (cont'd)

"The standard pace is for chumps" - Kimo

Entrepreneur Derek Sivers wrote about his own story when talking about taking charge of learning. At an early age, he figured out that institutionalized education was catered to the average person. There is no reason why you have to learn at the exact pace that people tell you to. As Derek says, "the system is designed so anyone can keep up." So why waste all that time surfing Facebook in class when you know that you can do so much more?

I'm keeping today's post short because I really hope you will click the above link and read Derek's story. Even to this day, it is still one of the few lessons that I keep reminding myself of each day. It allows me to push myself and not waste time on things that I will regret on later in life.

Taking Charge of Learning

Learners have more incentive to learn when they have control
over not only how they learn but also what they learn. [1]

When I try to decide whether I should skip or attend a class, I always ask, "how much learning will I get out of this?" In university, because most of the professors are not instructed on proper pedagogical (teaching) techniques, the lectures vary drastically in quality. In some classes, the concepts were so complicated that all we could do was take notes and try to figure out what it all meant on our own time. In other classes, the professor would slow down the class in order to make sure the slowest person would not get left behind. I found this to be pretty frustrating as it takes away my control of my learning.

This made me think. Who made these rules about how we should learn? Who says that they are the best? Even if they work for most people, who's to say that it works the best for me? In answering these questions, I think it's important to note that all throughout history, most people have done things the way they were taught simply because they were afraid of authority. I think it's important that we take a step back and take charge of our learning.

[1] J. Scott Armstrong (2012). "Natural Learning in Higher Education". Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning.