Edward Chiao Chiao is a third-year
electrical engineering student and Daily Bruin Senior Staff. E-mail
him at echiao@media.ucla.edu. Click
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Eight a.m. classes are my worst enemy. I’ve had one of
these dreaded lectures almost every quarter I’ve been a
student at UCLA. You all know what I’m talking about. The 8
a.m. lecture sticks out like a sore thumb in your schedule. You
wake up early, barely have time to get dressed and maybe eat
breakfast, stumble to class five minutes late, and fumble around
for your notebook and pencil “¦ only to fall asleep 15 minutes
later and wake up disoriented at the end of class.
As a solution, I propose that the School of Engineering and
Applied Sciences get rid of 8 a.m. lectures for required courses
and start the earliest lectures at 9 a.m.
Now I consider myself one of the more diligent students about
attending class, but even I have trouble making it to more than
three-fourths of my 8 a.m. classes. Apparently I’m not the
only one. Almost half of the students in my engineering classes
don’t even show up to class ““ and a good amount of
those who do fall asleep right away ““ unless there’s
homework due that day. When homework is due, students are too busy
to pay attention. We’re all furiously copying down the last
problems because we were sleeping in lecture when the professor was
explaining how to do it.
Even more sad is that when homework is due, only three-fourths
of the students even go to class. The remaining one-fourth are
either too tired to turn in their homework or have somebody turn it
in for them. Have you ever tried to take a Cholesky Factorization
class at 8 a.m.? It’s not fun.
Right now, the only reason why students enroll in the 8 a.m.
lectures is because they have to. Next quarter, in Electrical
Engineering alone, there are six required courses with lectures
starting at 8 am ““ EE 10, 102, 103, 121b, 141 and 172.
Students are forced to take these classes at 8 a.m. because they
aren’t offered at any other times. These classes are almost
completely filled, but if you take a closer look you’ll see
the discussion sections that start at 8 a.m. are the least popular
among students. In the 8 a.m. discussion for EE 103, only six of 25
students are enrolled, while the waiting lists are already filled
for the 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. discussion sections. It doesn’t
take an aerospace engineer to realize that we engineering students
dread 8 a.m. classes.
The bottom line is students are more likely to attend 9 a.m.
classes. Those who will show up to class are more likely to absorb
the material because they’re better rested and able to listen
to lectures. Once SEAS looks at the benefits of having 9 a.m.
classes, they’ll see that 8 a.m. classes are only a
disservice to the students and the the professors who teach
them.
There are some students who may actually enjoy waking up before
the sun rises; I say more power to them. To make everybody happy
SEAS could still offer 8 a.m. lectures, but only if the same
lecture is offered at a later time as well. Granted, this is an
easier feat to accomplish in lower division classes where there are
more students taking a certain class, but a slightly different
strategy can work for upper division courses as well.
If SEAS were to only schedule 8 a.m. lectures for elective
courses, then students would have the choice of whether or not to
enroll in an 8 a.m. class, instead of forcing them to take a
required course at that time. Doing this will give students more
freedom to choose their classes, which means they’ll be more
inclined to concentrate in class.
Before SEAS starts saying that eliminating 8 a.m. lectures for
most classes would be impossible, students should know that lecture
times have changed for students before. These 8 a.m. lectures are
not set in stone ““ in fact, the real reason why so many
engineering classes are scheduled for 8 a.m. or 4 p.m. is because
it’s easier to secure lecture halls for these times. At least
this is what one counselor told chemical engineering students when
they complained about one class being scheduled ““ Chem Eng
101C ““ at 8 a.m. By voicing their discontent, they had the
lecture hours changed to start at 2 pm.
If engineering students lobby hard enough, we can get what we
want. The shift from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. classes may seem fairly
insignificant, but I can guarantee that if SEAS makes the chance
more students will start showing up to morning lecture.