Taking Time for Homework

You may have noticed from these pages that a ``real'' math course will consume a lot of time. The old standard rule is that in a university course, you spend at least two hours out of class for each hour in class; this is (first of all) a minimum and (second of all) a decline from the old 1950s-60s standard of at least three hours out of class for each hour in class. (During the 1960s, students spent an average of 3.2 hours out of class for each hour in class, while a recent survey suggests that contemporary students spend an average of half an hour out of class for each hour in class.)

Several years ago, there was a study of two groups of students in Calculus, one group that was doing very well, and another that was not. This class was a 4-hour-a-week class, so students in theory should be working at least 8 hours out of class (per week) on it. The study found that among the group that was doing well, the students worked an average fourteen hours a week out of class, while in the group that was not doing well, the students worked an average six hours a week out of class. In my experience in Calculus, those students who work six or fewer hours a week usually got Ds or Fs, while those who work ten or more hours a week usually got As or Bs.

There are exceptions, in particular:

• Some students who already know the class material, and are taking the class by accident (!) or on purpose (!).

• A very small percentage of the students are so fast in mathematics that they can do the work very rapidly. Unfortunately, most students who think that they fit in this category actually do not, and they wind up not understanding the material.

• A number of students put in many hours staring blankly at the text and not accomplishing anything. There are a few students who work very hard and still do not do very well.

Of course, this presents a problem. The assumption is that a full-time student has a class load of fifteen hours, and will therefore work at least thirty hours out of class, and thus at least forty-five hours per week total. (Again, note the at least: students who put in even more time often do even better.) Nowadays, there are many full-time students who also have jobs. There are only 168 hours a week, and since sleep deprivation only makes matters worse (yes, there have been studies on this: sleep deprivation makes one unproductive in class and, in fact, dangerous when driving a car), there are really only 112 available hours per week after deleting eight hours for sleep per night. If you are a full-time student, you need at least 45 hours, perhaps more, to do schoolwork: if you don't have this time, then you will not learn the material and you are wasting your time and tuition money. But if you are also in a full-time job (40 hours per week) and need to do personal errands and eat meals and commute and clean house etc. (face it, no way this is under 20 hours a week) you have no time for anything else, including crises. In my experience, many students trying to maintain a full-time load and a full-time job get a D or worse (the ``or worse'' includes nervous breakdowns and health problems); I've had students who had jobs and then quit (and had their grades go up) and students who got jobs (and had grades go down). I would strongly recommend that you be a part-time student or have a part-time job.

So suppose that you have the time to do homework. The next problem is getting around to doing the homework. For that is the paradox: we set aside some time to do the homework and yet ... it doesn't really get done.