The Lecture

You slip into the crowded lecture hall and take a seat toward the back. You look at the clock on the wall to check the time. Perfect. As you had intended, you’ve arrived fashionably late. This course was incredibly boring, and the professor counted attendance through the end-of-class quiz. You’d figured out weeks ago that the quizzes were on the previous week’s content and all the previous week’s materials, including lecture recordings, were posted on the course’s website. Now you show up toward the end of class with the quiz material adequately studied and get to avoid most of the boredom that is learning physics in a crowded lecture hall. You’d tried at the beginning of the semester to come to the lecture and pay attention, but it was difficult to follow the professor’s words in such a crowded room. It was much easier to learn the material at home where the distractions were minimal. Unfortunately, this left you at a disadvantage on some of the extra credit questions and if the professor called on you to answer a question, it was an issue, sort of. Most of the class couldn’t hear you speak across such a massive space, anyway.

Lecture halls are for classes like history, courses that can be learned through listening alone, and in some cases that may be all that remains to study the topics of history, anyway. Courses like this where there may be questions galore on the content of that day’s lecture, a large class size like this is just inefficient and leads to poor student performance. Unfortunately, colleges don’t really care about that, you think. Places like this exist to make money. Knowledge is free, but the certification that you have that knowledge can cost you a lifetime of debt. Yet here you are sitting in a room full of other people going equally in debt for knowledge that is available as easily as the textbook you had to find for this class.

Why do we continue feeding into this horrendous institution you ask yourself? A small voice in the back of your mind reminds you of a thought you’d had long ago. Way back in high school, you laugh. It was only what? Three years ago?

The professor’s voice drones on, white noise in the background of your thoughts, like a fan running, as you remember back to senior year. The indoctrination had begun much sooner, with many of your classmates blindly submitting to it. Not you, though, you became self-aware. Starting at an early age, they drilled into the minds of yourself and your fellows that college would be how you became successful. The school quickly became not about the pursuit of knowledge as its creators had intended it, but quickly became how we measured our self-worth by the number next to those three letters that they made us believe determined our destiny.

Trade school was an option but not one that was mentioned to you, like a hidden quest in a video game unless you knew which way to go. It wasn’t a path you could follow. They taught you two choices. College or failure. If you could not achieve the academic success required for college or you couldn’t afford to go, then your only option in life, then became failure. At least that was the lie they taught you to believe. Sadly, despite your self-awareness, the calling that speaks to you is one where a degree is a requirement. So here you are sitting in a lecture hall, and you look at the front to see what the professor is doing. Here you are sitting here in a lecture hall, watching a man explain gravity by throwing his pen in the air. A chuckle escapes your throat. This, this is what you spend ten thousand a year on, and you're one of the lucky ones.

This school is relatively cheap. Most people spend upwards of twenty thousand a year for the same quality of education. State school, your financial savior. Ten thousand is still an outrageous price to pay for an education the likes of which you could receive for free provided you have access to the internet, but it’s better than twenty thousand or more for the same education.

The professor was still trying to explain acceleration during free fall to my classmates. He was throwing the pen to explain that there was a point where an object thrown in the air would stop before falling back down. The people in the class didn’t seem to be understanding that concept very well.

Once again, you look at the clock and check the time. You breathe a sigh of relief as you see that the time is coming closer to when you get to be free of his monotonous voice. Provided, of course, he remembers the quiz. If not, then you’d have to endure a few extra minutes until class ends and he realizes that he doesn’t have time for the quiz. Those days tended to be very frustrating for you since you only came for the attendance credit.

“What about the quiz?” You hear the dumbest person in the room probably ask, seriously, who asks to take a quiz that is ridiculous?

“Oh, right!” You hear the professor exclaim. Then he begins to fumble with his slide show. Good god his slide show was long. Why on earth does he need a slide show with what looks like nearly a hundred slides?

He pauses on a slide. The slide says: CLEAR YOUR DESKS OF ALL BUT A PEN AND A PIECE OF PAPER.

You quickly complied. The faster the quiz is done, the sooner you can go home and get your assignments done and then enjoy your night. You notice several people in class “putting their things away” of course the way they set the lecture hall up cheating was easy; the professor could not tell what was in your lap in the slightest. You didn’t try to cheat, it wasn’t worth it for you. Getting caught is something that tends to happen quite easily to you.

The professor clicks over to the next slide. Two questions. The quiz was only two questions. Good. You began to hurry to finish the quiz so you can leave.

You complete your quiz and pack your things and hurry to the front of the room to turn in your quiz. After you turn around and rush up the stairs and out the door. You hurry out of the building and to the parking garage. Once you get there, you get in your car and sigh an enormous sigh of relief. Finally, you can go home.