I have some comments about college life and learning. There are two things that seeded these ideas. First is this article from the Wall Street Journal - For Most People College is a Waste of Time. The second is this great essay on math education by Paul Lockhart - this is not the first place I found this article, but I can’t find the other blog that linked to it. Maybe you should read these two articles and then continue here.
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Tags: rant

I usually create posts focused on physics and science stuff, but I like to talk about learning also. Today I will talk about the question that comes up with faculty. Should you have attendance count as part of the course grade?
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Tags: teaching, lecture, attendance, rant

I often have a discussion with students about science. It usually starts with a student claiming that they really aren’t a “science person” they are more of a “___________” person. (where the blank can be english, history, art, etc). There are several important things about “I am not a science person”, but today I would like to compare science and history because really, they are not that different.
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So, I am teaching a class. I do this quite often. One thing I noticed is that some students are very concerned about missing class, but they don’t do too much work outside of class. For me, class is like the tip of an iceberg.

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I use the following analogy quite often. Usually, this comes up when I talk to students about how to succeed in class. The problem is that some students have an idea about learning that goes like this:


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