I have less lecture, and I must scream

Published: October 29, 2013

I learned something about myself today.

While sitting in my computer animation class, my professor was struggling to get the sound working on a video he wanted to show–a short piece on the performance capture techniques used by James Cameron and team on 2009’s Avatar. The lecture came to a standstill while this technical problem was worked out. Somewhere between six and seven minutes elapsed without any instruction, and this brief lapse in instruction frustrated the hell out of me.

In the past, I was always psyched when a professor canceled class. The joy I felt when class was cancelled was like waking up in middle school, looking out the window and seeing that a blizzard shit all over your city in the middle of the night. No school today! I got ten-year-old boy excited about not going to class as recently as last year. Ask my roommates. The less time my professors lectured, the less my professors could expect me to know, the easier my life became. Fast forward to today, and a six minute delay got under my skin. Truncated lectures have lost their ability to bring me joy.

What changed? I have a few guesses.

At Penn, unlike any previous time in my life, I’m fully financially invested in my education. My parents covered every cost (minus work study) of high school, and at UNO, I was fortunate enough to have scholarships pay for absolutely everything. At Penn, I’m paying my own tuition, and each lecture hour of the semester snags another $84 from my wallet. Since their time comes with such a high price tag, I want to wring all the knowledge I can from my professors while I have the opportunity. Minutes spent fiddling with audio equipment are dollars and knowledge wasted.

In grad school, unlike every other instance of formal education I’ve received, I’m not wasting my time on classes that don’t excite me. General education requirements don’t exist in the CGGT program at Penn, and that’s beautiful. I’ve declared my interests, and I’m learning about those things exclusively. Maybe I value my education more today than I did in the past because I actually enjoy all my classes (computer graphics, computer animation, and 3D computer modeling) for the first time in my life.

I feel like I’m taking my education more seriously today than ever before. Maybe it’s a sign of growth. Maybe it’s a sign of fear–fear that stems from the fact that I’m spending more money than I’ve ever had to stay in school. Whatever the reasons for my aforementioned irritation, I have a finite amount of time at Penn to learn as much as I can, and I don’t want to waste even six minutes of it.

Cheers.

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Image credit: Volkan Olmez