“I was really good for the first half of the lecture. Then the second half I made two fantasy trades.”
I feel this neatly encapsulates why lecture should never be mandatory. Darn it, sometimes you need to peace out halfway through, do something else, and then come back to the lecture later that night when you’re ready to focus. (And sometimes, Boyfriend comes all the way to Metropolis to visit me and I want to take just one day off to be a tourist with him… so I miss all the lectures. But thanks to the podcasts, I can just watch them on Sunday after he leaves. Sunday will be my Thursday.)
The only reason some schools make lecture mandatory, at least in my opinion (chime in if you have Actual Knowledge about this!), is because no course director likes to go to a ton of trouble scheduling Very Busy and Important Doctors to lecture, only to have that VBAID dismayed to find 15 people in class. So they require it and pass around a sign-in sheet, and everyone shows up – but I’m not sure it accomplishes anything besides making the class feel like they’re in 7th grade, and increasing everybody’s study time since you inevitably have to rewatch at least half of it later.
Action Potential 