Why attending class is the simplest step toward getting the grade you desire.

I was giving a tour around campus to a class of elementary schoolers last week as a "first exposure to college." Surprisingly it was a real fun tour to give… astronomically better than touring around a grossly disinterested middle school group.

I'm still smirking about the point in the tour when the kids realized attending class wasn't mandatory. You would have thought five UFOs just did a fly-over, Blue Angels style. At that point, their teacher made sure I reiterated why going to class was important.

It never gets old listening to classmates brag about their abysmal attendance record. I still can't think of an "accomplishment" that requires less action than missing class. But when kids brag about it, they make it seem as if it was a Duke Nukem-esque effort to oversleep five days in a row and not care.

Truth is, there isn't an easier variable to solve in the equation of achieving good grades than attending class. There's a popular saying that the brain must be exposed to something three times before it becomes truly "locked in" or understood. When you apply this theory to academics, it makes a boatload of sense.

You hear your teacher lecture about a completely foreign topic in class. For unity purposes let's pretend this topic is integration by parts (my guess is most all of us have taken or are taking Calculus). When the teacher goes through it for the first time, the concept is still fairly foreign, but at least you know what the goal of the process is.

That night you attempt some homework problems dealing with integration by parts. They are tough, so you go back and reference the chapter reading. Exposure No. 2. You complete the homework and now know enough to tell your parents what exactly it is you are doing in class. 

Finally, review time comes around and when your teacher or TA goes through integration by parts again, it all makes sense. There wasn't a lot of effort involved and you certainly didn't have to do anything out of the ordinary to understand it – you simply took the easy route.

Now imagine all of the kids sitting around you in that review session who were learning about integration by parts for the first time. You'll be catching up with TiVo that night while the lucky ones will be on Cramster making up for lost time.

Bet you aren't regretting struggling through that 9 a.m. class now, huh?

Are there certain subjects where attending class is more important than in other subjects? What are the biggest benefits of regularly getting yourself to lecture?