College Participation Essay

One of the best things we can do after high school is to continue our education by going to college. During a high school career fair, students may find themselves asking: â€Å"Why is it important to go to college? † Well, it is important because at college, students try new things, meet new people and expand their knowledge of the world. Higher education also improves their chances of having the lives and the job they always wanted. However, it is not as easy as they think. Students can get distracted by different things in college, which can prevent them from success and achieving their goals. In most cases, lack of class participation is one of the factors that could directly affect their education and increase their chances to quit college. Boring instructors and time management could be the obstacles for students to not participate in class activities. â€Å"My class is so boring†, â€Å"My instructor talks all the time†, â€Å"I fall asleep in my class†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ are popular sayings from college students. Why should students go to class when everything from the lectures can be found easily from the book? When the lectures are so boring and the instructors basically just represent the information from the book, students would think that it is not necessary for them to go class, so they skip. Moreover, there are instructors who just go to class with a mission: talk. They keep going on and on without any class activities for students to participate in. This makes class participation even harder for students who attend class regularly and have questions or topics they want to discuss. As a result, students easily fall asleep during the lectures. Next, time management could be considered one of the biggest barriers that prevents students from class participation. Part-time jobs, friends and school activities can occupy most of the time if students do not know how to manage their time well. College students may vary where they come from. They could be high school graduate students or people who come back after years to have higher education in order to achieve their goals. But, they all cannot fully function as well as normal if they had to work until 12 the night before and then go to class at 8 in the morning. Since some have to earn money for tuition, their jobs occupy most of their time rather than finishing their homework and preparing for classes in the next day. On the other hand, in college, students always meet new friends and new people, so hanging out with them will just be a part of a student’s schedule. It can put them in trouble if they cannot balance themselves between spending time on school work and friends. It is even harder for those who are school athletes. It is impossible for them to be able to finish their homework and to prepare for class after hours of sport practices. With unfinished homework, lack of sleep and no class preparation, students will just attend classes with empty brains. Despite great lectures from the instructors, they all will just fall asleep during class or hardly join class activities. As a result, lack of class participation would prevent students from deeply understanding the lectures, increasing their chances to fall in the path of getting bad grades on exam. Class participation helps student to interact with each other and with teacher. It is an opportunity for students to practice in-class problems in order to deeply understand the lectures. It also helps them to better prepare for the assignments and exams. Unlike in high school, in college, students may have to finish a book in a short quarter. Dealing with large amounts of information in the short time, students may find it difficult to memorize details from the lectures and the book if they do not understand the lectures in depth. If so, it becomes difficult for them be able to score high in the exam because a test in college usually covers at least three to four chapters. Thus, it would not be strange if they got bad grades in the exams. On the other hand, in some classes, participation in class could be counted as a participation grade which can affect the student’s grade in general. One more important thing is that the instructors sometimes use the discussion questions for the upcoming test, so it would be a big disadvantage for those who attended class but did not actually participate in class activities. By having too many bad grades, students will just drop out of class or, the worst thing could happen, they quit. Approximately three million students enroll in some form of college every year; however, 33% drop out each year. From lack of class participation, students will feel alone and school becomes the most boring place they have to go to every day. They do not see the importance of going to college. Students will just quit to find a job that can fit them in. In order to have students participate in class, instructors should have some strategies to make their lecture more interesting to students and create interactive activities such as rolling dice to have students answer question or group discussions†¦ However, students also have to actively prepare for classes and participate in class activities. Checklists and to-do lists can be a student’s best friends if they have trouble with managing their time. By doing so, students can balance their time on school works and outside activities more effectively and have more spare time for themselves. When students find it more interesting to participate in class, it means they are one step closer to be successful in college. Because the more time students participate in class, the more knowledge they can gain and the more successful they can be.