Ditching Class

When I was an undergraduate I was a big proponent of ditching. If I could do the homework and pass the exams, why attend class? Of course, not every class worked this way, but many did and I worked very hard to ditch them consistently. Like Statics. I would attend once every three weeks right before the exam to find out when and where the exam review would be held. I would attend the review and then get an A on the exam. The there was Number Theory and Linear Algebra and C++. Oh wait. I went to C++. I just played on my laptop during class. But anyway, the point is that I ditched a lot of class.

But all that changed when I started grad school. Grad school is for serious students and I don't just ditch class because I feel like it anymore. At least, that's what I told myself on my first day of classes last year. It lasted for a few weeks. Since then I have very consistently ditched Combinatorics (Spring 06) and Intermediate Differential Equations (Fall 06). But I didn't have any easy classes like those this semester so I've had to go to class, like I'm paid to do. As a reward for my exemplary behavior this semester, today I treated myself to ditching Algebraic Geometry from 4:45 to 6:00. I don't know if this is the sort of positive reinforcement I ought to be trying.