Do you realize how fortunate we are? We are in college. Somehow we managed to get through high school with an adequate GPA, score well enough on the SATs or ACTs and write a killer essay to gain admittance to a center for higher learning. As university students, we are hopefully going to graduate with a degree that will open doors most non-college graduates can’t ever hope to enter. We are very fortunate to be here.

Why, then, do we squander our chance? Do you realize how much it costs you to waste an hour of class time? In-state tuition for fall 2007, according to the Cashier’s Office link on the UW-Platteville Web site, is $2,873.04 for a full time student. For a typical student, that means 15 hours of class a week for right around 15 weeks. So we take 15 hours and multiply it by 15 weeks to get 225 hours of class time. You pay $2,873.04 for about 225 hours of class time, making the cost per hour $12.77. That doesn’t seem so bad for missing one class. So you wasted about $13 bucks, no biggie. But multiply that by how many class periods missed and how many class periods when you were not mentally present and the cost gets big in a hurry.

Now let’s talk about the non-financial cost of missing class or being mindless while in class. Do you realize how disrespectful it is to your classmates and to your professors to constantly show up late?

I realize there are some reasonable circumstances that make students late (like the nightmare of commuter parking and other classes running late), but excuses get unreasonable when used every day. Most of us run late from time to time, but it gets old when the same people show up late again and again. Professors deserve better than that and so do your classmates. Get there on time. Our generation gets a bad reputation for being disrespectful and lazy; let’s not make the opposition’s case.

It is starting to seem like I am anti-technology, but I’m not. My thought is a lot like Peter Parker’s uncle’s advice in “Spiderman”–– “with great technology comes great responsibility.” Cell phones are awesome, but we should be able to handle turning them off in class. I am guilty of forgetting this occasionally, and I feel like a complete dolt when my grandma decides to call in the middle of a history lecture, but you can bet it’ll be off next time.

MP3 players make walking alone more exciting, but there is no reason to listen to them in class. If I can see the wires to those little ear buds, the professor can too. The world is lucky I’m not a professor because if a student had the audacity to listen to their MP3 player while in my class, I would bounce them right out the door. Laptops are a mixed blessing. Taking notes on one can be useful, but if the pull to play Spider Solitaire and check for wall posts is too strong you’re better off with a pen and paper.

Have you ever noticed that classes get really full on exam days? All these people you’ve never seen before are all of a sudden in class (where their presence throws off the whole unspoken seating chart). I know Second Street calls, but is the Captain going to be there to study with you as you scramble to learn a semester’s worth of information in one night?

There are a lot of legitimate reasons to miss class, but even those classes missed for good reasons are full of information you’ve missed out on. I think of Dr. Adam Stanley’s class: I hate missing it, because he is informative and engaging, so 52 minutes really fly by. When I have to miss his class, I feel disappointed because I missed out. That is how higher education should be. So get out of bed, turn off the phone, get the ear buds out of your ears and show up on time. It is your education and your life –– take a little interest in it.