Though it may seem trivial at first glance, the scheduling of labs and classes can hugely affect student quality of life throughout the term. After classes and labs are scheduled, the remaining time is used to schedule the seemingly endless monotony of homework, assignments, projects, exams, and electives, as well as recreational activities (including complaining about scheduling!) and basic self-maintenance (i.e.: feeding oneself and keeping a sufficient supply of clean underwear). This unscheduled time is so critical to university students, particularly those of us in Engineering with very heavy class schedules and workloads. For students to get the most out of their unscheduled time, it only makes sense to have classes in the morning and labs in the afternoon.
Before exploring why morning classes trump morning labs, let’s take a step back and look at the time incurred by each.
Classes: The majority of engineering student takes five courses a term. Some terms (depending on the program) students will take six or yes, even a whopping seven courses. Each course typically has three hours scheduled each week (though some may have four), making for a total of at least 15 hours per week. Several programs also have hell week—this can entail an addition of up to two extra 1 hour lectures per course assuming the prof uses all of them (it remains inexplicable as to why they schedule five make-up lectures when one week only equals three missed lectures…). Also, the vast majority of courses have a weekly one-hour tutorial scheduled as well. So right now we are up to a minimum of 20 hours per week on classes alone (assuming no additional make up lectures).
Labs: Time-wise they come in a variety of shapes and sizes—they are usually three to four hours in length, but some are known to be even longer (on the order of seven, anyone?). Being careful to stay general here, the average lab takes three to four hours and there is roughly one to two per week (again, depending on the program). Each lab often consists of a pre-lab and a post-lab or report as well, so taking into account two to three hours for these per lab, let’s add about 6 hours per week to the list.
So the bare minimum total is now 26 hours. Most typical schedules have closer to 30 or 35 scheduled hours (at least before fourth year anyway).
As we can see, labs are typically a large block of time. Classes are usually (and sensibly) lumped together as well into blocks of four hours. The fifth course is often an elective which can take on a variety of forms including a three hour block in the evening, two 1.5 hour sessions weekly or even three one-hour chunks (though the latter is the least common due to timetabling problems).
Okay yeah, so what’s the difference? The key distinction here is that labs occur once or twice a week, whereas that four-hour block of classes happens everyday. If labs happen in the morning (so 8:30-11:30 or 12:30), the four-hour, everyday class block is usually 1:30—5:30 PM. If you are unlucky and tutorials are not scheduled in the morning (and providing that you go to tutorials), you could be done as late as 6:30 basically everyday of the week!
The other key consequence of this is that you absolutely have to make the most out of your mornings. Unless you are productive into the middle of the night (though many people are…) there is absolutely no choice. Sleeping in is extremely tempting, but will waste time and just put more pressure on to get things done after four to five hours of class. This can be understandably difficult to do after sitting down and trying to stay focused (note the use of the word ‘trying’) for such a long time. Outside of mornings, your time after class will probably be limited to that between eating dinner and when you inevitably fall asleep at your desk. So if there’s something due soon that you didn’t quite get to this morning… you know the rest.
With classes in the morning, most days will be free after 12:30pm. This allows time to recover from the monotony of class and take a break without feeling pressured that there is such a limited amount of time left in the day to get homework, etc. done. For many people, it also facilitates an easier sleeping schedule, and for everyone, it eliminates the temptation to waste time by sleeping in.
Classes, often scheduled in four-hour blocks, form the vast majority of the very long scheduled week (often around 30 hours). Though labs take a large chunk of time, there are usually only one or two a week. Classes happen everyday, which is why it is imperative that they are scheduled in the morning. Labs scheduled in the morning results in classes being moved to the afternoon. The result is that most people basically have to be productive in the morning hours to get their homework done, as there is limited time between classes ending and falling asleep. Though it may be possible to get a lot done on a few nights after class when critically necessary, for many people this is just not a sustainable practice. It is much easier to get things done knowing that you are not limited by having to run to class in an hour or two. Hence morning classes, please. Enough said.
Leave a Reply