Work Smarter, Not Harder

I’m sitting here in my Modern European Novel class listening to person after person whine and complain about how hard James Joyce’s Ulysses is so far. We made it all of the way through Flaubert’s Madame Bovary already, and they haven’t figured out the biggest characteristic of our professor: he likes to tell you EXACTLY what you need to know for the study guides and exams.

This is my second course with this professor, so I came in knowing this about him, but now they have no excuse. For my Summer semester British Lit 1900-1945 class, I started reading the first story and realized that he just stands up there and talks about every important paragraph, sentence, motif, character, and author style that we need to know. Why read the stinking books? I have a life, and a busy one at that. I’m not going to waste my time reading the thing if I’m just going to be spoonfed directly from the maker of the exams.

So, for 13 weeks, two nights per week, 4 hours per night, I sat there and worked on websites and recorded his lecture while taking sparse notes and got an A-. I have no plans on changing my tactics this semester, and I am not sure why no one else can see this pattern after three 3-hour classes with him. These are juniors and seniors with 100+ credit hours. Can’t they see a free ride when they get one? As long as you can write coherent sentences and regurgitate his major points, you score easy points.

That’s all I have for now… gotta load up Word and get the notes file ready for class.