Last week in our major class, a student asked the teacher for a leave because he needed to attend an interview, though the teacher approved, he questioned back “Is the interview more important than my class?” I didn’t know whether the teacher was serious, but I betted the student was struggling, because to skip class is always a hard decision for college students. In our middle school, we didn’t have this problem, as we are required to attend every class. We were under the pressure of the College Entrance Examination, if we missed the class, we have to make it up.

In college, it is another story, we become more freely and also more entangled. There are both objective and subjective reasons for this struggle. Sometimes you really have other affairs to handle, in other occasions, you may want to skip a class just because you don’t like the professor. For instance, I chose a course which is very boring. I think I learn little from this class but I attend the class routinely every week, since the teacher usually check the attendance. As I know whether the teacher check attendance is a decisive factor for many college students, because some of them just want a good outcome, that is they can achieve pretty grades at the end of a semester, and the attendance rate would affect their grades. For those teachers who force students by attendance rate, students usually have no choice. Perhaps this idea is nor right, but realistic.

To be honest, I am a person who would try my best not to skip a course, as this show your respect to the teacher. I remember last semester, I chose a course of an old professor, no question, he is knowledgeable, but his class was kind of boring, he had no interaction with the students and spoke alone. What was more, he never called the roll, and his class turned out to have little people. I have never skipped his class, I thought he may be frustrated if there were little people, and as a student, we should respect his efforts.

However, it’s hard to criticize those who skip classes. Some judge this problem in the respect of efficiency, they explained “I can hardly learn knowledge for this class, it’s totally a waste of time. I’d better spend this time on other meaningful things.” To some extent, I agree with them, some courses are not attractive, and the teachers are not going to change their teaching style, under this situation, they think they have a higher efficiency to study on their own.

Should a student have the right to miss a class that they don’t like? In China, not every student can take the major they really want, it is common some students are transferred to the specialty that they dislike. Thus they skip their major classes and learn what they like. Can we say they are wrong? So I think to skip a class is an embarrassing problem for both students and teachers.