Sleeping through your alarm clock and your 8 o’clock algebra class, deciding that lunch with your friends is more appealing than your biology lab, or simply convincing yourself that nothing important will be discussed in your history lecture today – there are many reasons students choose to skip class. But for as many excuses you have to skip, there are also as many different ways that attendance, or lack thereof, can begin to affect your grade.
First of all, most courses have an attendance policy. Some professors do not care if you show up to class or not, others believe that if they show up, then you should too. Make sure you understand their policy because skipping class can really start to affect your grade. It is not uncommon for professors to allow a few absences in case of sickness or an emergency and then start deducting points for each additional absence. Professors take attendance in many ways, from having students sign in to calling out there names during the first five minutes of class. It’s important to make sure you are counted by getting there on time. You don’t want your final grade to go from a B to a C just because you slept in again.
Second, going to class ensures that you don’t miss out on important lecture notes or announcements. You don’t want to show up ready for a quiz on Wednesday only to find that it was moved to Monday and you missed it. Think that you can ace the test just by reading the chapters? Not necessarily. Most people don’t learn by reading alone and if you want to truly know exam material, you need to process the information as many ways as you can. Consider your learning style. If you are an auditory learner, you will learn best through listening to lectures and participating in discussions. If you are a visual learner, you can better process information when you can see information on visual display, such as on a Power Point presentation or videos. If you are a kinesthetic learner, you learn best through hands-on approaches like working on projects or participating in class exercises. Throughout the course, your professor is likely to use auditory, visual, and kinesthetic ways to present information, so if you are not in class, you can really miss out on ways of learning that can really improve your exam grades.