DarrylBallantyne.com

D A R R Y L B A L L A N T Y N E . C O M

How I'd Like To Take Classes
August 23, 2001

For those of you who have attended post secondary education, you'll remember that wonderful time known as exam week. In the span of about ten days, you experience the joy of staring five (or more) three hour (or more) final exams in the face. For me, this means learning the entire semester's worth of material in an average of two days per course. Not exactly my idea of a good time.

So what ends up happening? I shove as much information about one course in my head as possible, only to shove it out immediately after the exam - to make room for the next one. The result is that the information never really has time to be digested - it never moves from short-term memory to long-term memory. If I ever needed to actually apply that knowledge, I'd have to learn it all over again.

Here's my solution, which will never be adopted. Instead of taking five courses every four months, take one course each month. Think of the benefits:

Students can concentrate on one course at a time, and (gasp) actually LEARN it. Sure, it'll be more intensive (four times as many hours per week), but since we're all learning everything in two days anyway, this isn't a problem. We could actually study in advance for more than one or two courses!

Information isn't immediately cast away after the exam, giving time to be digested and migrate from short-term to long-term memory.

More more multi-assignment stress, as each prof has a tendency to think that his/her course is the single most important thing in your life and you should be able to spend 20+ hours/week doing work for it.

Greater flexibility; need a month off for any reason? Can't afford eight full months of school? No problem!

Similar benefits for profs; maybe now we can spend 20 hours/week on your course, plus you won't need to handle multiple courses.

Something very dear to me - it would open up some time to pursue other activities - like running your own business! I could pursue so many ideas!

Of course, there is the odd drawback:

You'll take 20% less classes, stretching a 32-month program to 40 months.

Some (read: few) courses are time-sensitive, requiring four months for such things as market observation, research, etc.

As mentioned earlier, it's a much more intensive course (similar to summer school back in high school, if you took it).

Overall, it'd be a much better system for me, and probably many other people. I'm interested in hearing other people's thoughts on this - got an opinion or comment? Have I missed something? E-Mail me and let me know what's on your mind.