I’m just wrapping up week 3 of the fall semester here at Virginia Tech, but it feels like week 1. Having gone through two normal semesters thus far — fall of last year and spring of this year — followed by two summer semesters, I’ve found that the contrast between the two types of semesters is quite stark. Summer semesters are a hair under six weeks apiece, with a half class load of 3 classes, while fall and spring semesters are four months long, with 5-7 classes.
Rather than too brief, as most students lament, I’ve found that a six-week semester is actually a bit too long — four or five weeks would be better. (Being able to take a couple more classes would have the same effect.) The same amount of information is presented in a six-week semester as in a regular semester, it’s just that class is held every day, rather than 2-3 times each week. There are tests and papers due weekly, and an exam every 2-3 weeks. It’s great. It’s the speed at which I learn.
Consequently, a four-month semester now seems horribly, horribly long. Dream-where-you’re-running-in-slow-motion-and-can’t-escape long. I mean, we’re nearly a quarter of the way through the semester and we’re still working out seating. In my statistics class, we still haven’t received a syllabus.
After working fairly hard last fall and getting excellent grades, I decided to work a little less hard in the spring. I didn’t read all of my textbooks before the semester started, and stopped preparing detailed class-by-class study sheets. Still with the good grades. Come my first summer semester, I decided to read immediately before class and otherwise study only right before tests. Again, great grades. Second summer semester, I read in class and studied minimally. My cumulative GPA edged closer to 4.0.
Of course, this is a concept with a flawed logical extreme — perfect grades and maximum learning will not result from spending the semester in Vegas. I may have pushed this as far as I can.
At the moment, it’s a sort of a tortoise and the hare situation, in that I’ve done virtually no work in the past three weeks, because I things are moving at such a crawl that I can usually find something better to do. It may be just a matter of time until the tortoise passes me by while I nap underneath a tree.
Hypothetically, I’m going to study now. But I may find something more urgent to do.