You’re sitting in class and the professor asks a question. The room remains silent. As time stretches, the silence becomes more unbearable. The professor stares at your class while you look anywhere but them—your laptop, notebook and out the window.
You silently beg for the silence to end, but no one dares to break it. Maybe a brave student will answer, and the class will let out a sigh of relief. It doesn’t matter what your classmate says at this point, as long as it’s something.
Or maybe the silence extends for a moment too long, and the professor asks the dreaded question: “Did you even complete the reading?”
Yes professor, I did complete the reading, but I don’t understand it. I rushed through the long reading without absorbing its complex ideas.
It’s no surprise that academics are among college students’ top stressors. Although professors can be understanding when it comes to the workload of their courses, students often feel like there isn’t enough time in the day to complete their long list of responsibilities.
“I think that the workload given overall by my professors is not entirely hard to manage in terms of getting it done, but it is hard to manage without stress and anxiety, while also trying to balance school and social life,” said Ashlyn Allemand, ’25.
Quality over quantity
When creating assignments for their courses, professors should prioritize quality over quantity. While reading lengthier assignments, there often comes a point when the reading becomes rushed. Students may complete the assignment, but we are merely crossing off an item on our to-do list rather than fully understanding the material.
A break is desperately needed when our eyes undergo the motions of reading without comprehending the meaning. But amidst our busy schedules, many students can’t afford the luxury of breaks. Is this learning style more effective than closely reading a smaller portion of text?
“If professors assigned less homework, I would be able to be more thoughtful about the topics we are studying and discussing without rushing to get it done,” said Allemand.
There simply isn’t enough time during an hour long class to discuss 60 plus pages of reading. The result: students make sweeping generalizations. Deeply analyzing a smaller portion of a text is more effective. Not only are the discussions more focused, but students can also obtain concrete examples of the concepts they are learning. Instead of flipping through an entire novel without knowing where to begin a discussion, students will have a smaller number of pages to cover, allowing them to think more critically.
“I know that my inclination is to over-assign when it comes to reading, so to guard against that tendency, I try to think about how much reading we could reasonably cover in each session or sitting. So we’ll still read multiple novels, for example, in a how-to-write-fiction class; we’ll just make sure to divide the work into smaller, more digestible pieces,” said Professor Zachary Michael Jack of the NCC English Department.
However, I understand that assigning less reading isn’t always attainable. If professors continue to assign lengthy reading assignments, all I ask is that you point out specific sections of the text that are especially important. We can further our learning by diverting our energy to comprehending the most important concepts in a text.
