Photo by Michael Stein, The Daily Illini

Freshman year is about knowing what freedom means. I don’t mean in some abstract “Do we have free will?” kind of way, but in the sense that freedom is an action made without external pressure.

Again, let’s bypass all the big questions of “Can I kill turtle if no one will know?” and look at something which every student, but especially freshman, are confronted with every day of their academic careers:

Should I go to class?

Well, should you? Incoming freshman may be flabbergasted by this, but not all classes take attendance. Sometimes these classes are lectures with hundreds of students, or in other cases teachers doll out excused absences like candy or are very lax on their attendance policy.

This decision becomes even more difficult when you discover a class that doesn’t require much effort. The rationalizations for this case are virtually infinite: I could just read the textbook in my room, the teacher posts all the slides online, my buddy Chaz will tell me if I missed anything etc. ad nauseum.

There is a fundamental problem with this thought process: you are a student. While much of the college culture around you is dedicated to maximizing leisure, freshmen should realize that being a student isn’t a holding pattern or day care service before real life starts.

Going to class isn’t just a chore a student does, it’s a job. If I wasn’t in school right now, I would be in the workforce, and in a sense I am working a full time job of being a student, only my wages are not in dollars but in knowledge and skills. Don’t think of tuition as money paid for a service, think of it as your salary translated into another currency.

Before I get to entrenched on my high horse, I should admit that I’ve skipped a lot of class in my two years in college. In fact, I skipped all but the first meeting of my economics discussion section during my second semester freshman year. However, the B- I ended up getting (go to discussion  sections, it’s worth it!) wasn’t the most negative effect of my truancy.

The worst part was that I was bored in that economics class, and I never gave myself a chance to get interested. Had I gone to those discussion sections, I could have gained real knowledge, learned concepts that could help me “out there” in the real world. But I crammed for quizzes and tests and never gave the class a chance.

Obviously there will be some classes that won’t interest you, but you can combat this by choosing, of your own free will, classes that you are invested in. Four years may seem like a long time, but ask any senior: there is nothing more limited and fleeting as the opportunity you’re about to encounter? For every major requirement that you know is going to tax your attention span, make sure to have classes that you can get excited about attending.

The freedom that allows you to hit the snooze button and sleep until lunch is the same freedom that allows you investigate your passions and take a class that is more than just “a non-Western.”

If you can, never take a class just because it’s a blow-off, because you may end up finding that you’ve blown off the amazing opportunities that college represents.

Danny is a junior in Media.

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