Too lazy. Boring class. Sleepiness.
These are some of the reasons students avoid attending class; they are all excuses that just about everyone has used at one point or another. Class attendance in college is not as strictly enforced as it is in high school; college students may miss a class meeting for personal reasons here and there. There is usually no penalty if they provide their instructor with advance notice.
However, there are students that are repeatedly absent, to the point where it affects their grade and enrollment status in class. How do such absences affect school performance on the parts of teachers and students?
“Going to class regularly helps me focus,” said Leslie Chan,a freshman student at Skyline. “There are a few classes that I’ve taken that probably would have gotten a good grade in without go- ing regularly, but I still went.”
The question of whether there are certain classes students can pass or even ace without regular attendance is answered by Profes– sor Luciana Castro, a Spanish- language instructor. She responded with a specific example of her Spanish 110 class.
“I cannot screen who comes in or out initially to enroll in SPAN 110 (Elementary Spanish),” Castro said. “Thus, I have many speakers of Spanish who insist on taking this class. If they miss many classes, they still may get an ‘A’ because they know so much already that they do not even need the class to start with.”
While she legally cannot take those students out of the class, Castro encourages them to take higher level classes that would be more challenging for them.
She was quick to add that most students that don’t regularly attend end up doing major catch-up work or dropping the class.
“For most students who belong to the class, not coming creates a huge problem for them to catch up,” Castro said. “Most of the time they cannot do it and end up having to go to TLC (the Skyline College Learning Center) tutorials for weeks to catch up, or they end up dropping the course.”
Castro’s beliefs about regular attendance are shared by Profes– sor Kate Al-Shamma, who teaches oral communication. She agrees that students must be in class to learn skills, especially in a speech class.
“Students who miss several classes do poorly in this class,” Al-Shamma said.
Professor Christine Case of the biology department has a strong opinion on student absences, fo– cusing on the merits of hard work and being responsible about going to class. Her attendance policy is firm in that students must attend both lecture and lab.
“My policy relates both to suc– cess in my class and to developing habits for the rest of your life,” Case said. “I know some students miss class to work on an assignment for another class. Missing one class and doing an assign- ment at the last minute won’t help you in either class. You feel lost when you miss class because you don’t have the context, and this starts a cycle of poor perfor– mance and more missed classes.”
She believes that the real question is “Do students who miss a lot of classes perform poorly because they were not present, or are students with high levels of absenteeism less com- mitted to academics in general?”
Case cited Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000-Hour Rule” from his book “Outliers” as a strong point in hard work; that is, the key to success in a specific discipline is practicing it for 10,000 hours.
In the end, Case boils it down to how motivated a student is. “You have to learn it,” Case said. “The professor can’t crawl inside you with the information.”
The argument for regular attendance is strong; excessive absences have a negative impact on students’ academic lives.
“No matter how bored or sleepy you are, if it’s something you signed up to do, you gotta do it,” Leslie Chan said.
