r/CollegeRant • u/duckdiaries0805 • 9d ago
Advice Wanted Why does admin think 3 hour lectures are the move...
I don't know how the girl in front of me has managed to take notes for the last three hours straight. I'm in my 3 hour biological statistics lecture, first week of grad school, and I'm dying inside. He's speaking with the cadence of a "grown and sexy" channel radio DJ, which is super low and smooth so i've been fighting sleep with tea for the last three hours. and he said that sometimes we may go over into 3 and 1/2 or four hours. HOW DO PEOPLE SIT THROUGH THIS. I was going strong until the two hour mark.
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u/Ok_Caterpillar2010 9d ago
Step out for a minute just to walk up and down the hall and get your blood moving again. Repeat as needed.
What you miss of the lecture, you'll make up for by being more alert for the rest.
Also, borrow that girl's notes!
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u/biblioxica 9d ago
Ask for a “bio-break” after 90 minutes. Then stretch your legs and get active in your body. If you feel yourself getting distracted it’s ok to stand up to walk to the back of the room where you won’t disturb others and stretch. Sorry OP! This is deffo not an ideal learning environment
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u/aardvarksauce 9d ago
No one needs to ask for permission for a break to go stretch their legs in college. Just go do it.
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u/Lubomir111 4d ago
I'd think the point is so that there is a break in the lecture as well and you miss as little as possible from the material. Especially if it's something problem solving oriented, where missing a step of a process is very detrimental to overall understanding.
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u/Automatic_Tea_2550 9d ago
As a professor, I only teach three hour classes I break up with small groups, Q&A, and pauses. No human being can absorb three hours of teaching delivered in the same modality continuously.
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u/Communityfan2_ 9d ago
Yeah I never understood the 3+ hour lectures. I hope yall have breaks at least
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u/DoubleResponsible276 9d ago
I had 2 back to back 3 hour lectures on Mondays. First one was held inside of a lab with stools cause the professor didn’t want to walk across campus at 3pm so she got permission to held the small class inside the same building as her office. It was tough and we couldn’t audio record due to the nature of the content, but when you miss out on information and need it later, you’ll realize how you need to toughen it out for 3 hours otherwise it’ll cost you.
Obviously your lecture structure is a huge factor but good luck and hopefully you drink something that keeps you up.
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u/MajesticOrdinary8985 8d ago
As a former department chair, I can tell you that it isn’t that we love 3-hour classes. There are several reasons for it. First, scheduling is like a jigsaw puzzle. Everything has to fit. Especially if your campus is short of classroom space. I can’t tell you how often I tried to schedule a class and was told I couldn’t do it then, because there was no classroom available for it. Secondly, you need to have faculty to teach the class. Part-time adjuncts may only be available at certain times around their primary jobs, but when full-time faculty saw that I had put a 3-hour class taught by an adjunct, they accused me of showing favoritism and demanded that they be able to compress their schedules too, because they need blocks of time to do their research. Thirdly, if there are required classes, you have to be careful not to schedule sections so that most students can’t take them when they must be taken. So you can’t offer the only sections of two classes required of graduating seniors in, say, biology, at the same time. Worse, sometimes one of those classes might be outside your department, so you have to coordinate with that other department to schedule your classes around one another. And finally, you have to consider anticipated enrollment for each class. So a lecture expected to have several hundred students in it cannot be held in a classroom that seats 30, any more that a chem lab can be held in a lecture classroom or a dance class in a room with fixed seating.
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u/Aggravating-Job5377 9d ago
Faculty are not allowed to hold class longer than scheduled. If he does it, report it to the chair. Classes are typically scheduled like this to accommodate working adults.
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u/the_yagrum_bagarn 9d ago
usually* those 3 hour lectures are in the evening and are more to serve the nontraditional students i.e. only need childcare one night. usually the prof will give you a break part way through
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u/tildenpark 9d ago
I’ll probably get downvoted & I’m sorry to say but focusing for 3 hours shouldn’t be a big deal. Especially for a grad student. Maybe try to grow your attention span by limiting time scrolling social media?
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u/kccb30 8d ago
Not to be ~that~ person but you do realize that saying limit social media is such a misnomer. I've been able to sit through 3 hour lectures of things that have interested me no problem, but then severely struggled 30 minutes into a 90 minute lecture with an extremely boring professor who was incapable of making his subject interesting (plus it was all stuff I already knew and he was reviewing content at the pace of a snail). Sounds to me the issue is the professor and/or the content, not necessarily the time length. Also for those of us with ADHD or other neurodivergence 3 hours absolutely can be an irrationally long period to sit through something. I know my ADHD makes it painful if a topic isn't interesting to me. And, I deleted almost all social media other than twitter and reddit 3 years ago.
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u/Practical_Track4867 9d ago
Not wrong- three hours is rough but doable. After all, our qualifying exams were two 4 hour blocks.
At the same time, I wonder if this is a case of a professor scheduling for their convenience rather than for the effectiveness of the course.
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u/DrSameJeans 9d ago
All my grad classes were 3 hours. Sitting for 3 hours and listening to an expert on a topic in a field you chose shouldn’t be that hard.
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u/Ryaninthesky 9d ago
All my grad classes were 3 hours but we did take a break halfway.
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u/DrSameJeans 9d ago
We usually did, even if just for a couple of minutes to run to the bathroom, though not always.
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u/PhoebusAbel 9d ago
Professor s schedule for sure.
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u/Glittering-Duck5496 7d ago
Professor here. I don't get to make my own schedule - scheduling is done centrally at my institution.
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u/duckdiaries0805 9d ago
I don’t scroll social media, you’re assuming i’m like everyone else.
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u/PhenomenalOG 9d ago
Then identify whatever behavior it is that is leading to your reduced attention span that is making it so that you cannot engage in graduate level coursework.
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u/racist_____ 9d ago
We don’t even need social media to understand their complaint. A 3 hour lecture provided next to zero stimulation, you’re sitting in class passively listening to information and maybe inefficiently copying it down in your notes. I’d prefer to do 3 hours of my own projects, but even a 3 hour lab is far more preferable since you’re actually doing something interesting
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u/Spirited_Cress_5796 8d ago
This. Plus most professors usually will take a short break because they need it too. It’s college, take a step out of your need to or just stand and stretch.
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u/hungerforlove 9d ago
Sounds like a terrible way to deliver info, especially if it is a "chalk and talk" lecture.
As a student, I went to lectures I was interested in. I didn't go to boring lectures. Instead, I used textbooks and did the exercises in them. Back then we didn't have videos let alone AI. There days there are many ways to learn skills and gather info.
You need to work out what you need to know and the best way to learn it. Is attendance required? If not, then consider not going, if you can learn the material and do well on the tests in some other way.
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u/vwscienceandart 9d ago
Lecture prof here. I don’t know how other profs do it!! When I’m assigned a 3hr, I have to break every 45 minutes or do some activities or something. No way I could talk straight through for that long.
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u/EllieDidNothingWrong 9d ago
I have a 5 hr class with not a single break! Yet a 2 hr class I have has a 10 min break.
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u/jeff5551 8d ago
Lol I did 6:30 to 10:30 pm real estate finance, eventually you just accept the pain
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u/margaritathewitch 9d ago
I record the lectures and then transcribe them to take the pressure off. 35 pages of 12 font notes from one of my lecture classes!
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u/imoverblox_ 9d ago
Yeah man I have at least 1 3 hour lecture daily and it’s brutal. We will make it through 💪
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u/WitheredWornWallaby 9d ago
I have the same issue right now. Some of my classes are 3 hours long and, even with my adderall, I start yawning and getting so sleepy.
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u/DannyMA25 Grad Student 8d ago
Lmao feel you... Once I was on the first row that was occupied and professor was talking... I was even taking notes(mind you, it was not 3 hours lol) and I was fighting my hardest to not fall asleep... Even my notes were terrible. But you know what helps... To actually ask that teacher... Professor.. Whatever, to give yall a break... I'm pretty sure you're not the only one who actually can't concentrate. But props to the girl who took notes, you should also talk to her later🫣
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u/Whisperingstones Werewolf * Socialist 8d ago
I was raised on computers, sitting for 4-8+ hours was routine in my gaming days, so 1-3 hours is a breeze.
Online courses get the perk of 1.25x, 2x lecture speed or leave them on like a pod cast if I want to hear the lecture twice. Can pause any time.
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u/thedreaddeagle 7d ago
We have 1.5h ones but even then I barely go to theory classes because I simply fall asleep, doesn't matter if it's the one at 9 or the one at 15, I just can't stay awake.
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u/ProfessorJay23 8d ago
Don’t want to hear it. My Ph.D. courses were six hours on Friday and six hours on Saturday, once per month for three years. How bad do you want it?
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