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Comment by make3 | Hacker News Reader

blackboards in uni where you can't do anything but just rewrite everything the prof is writing is a nightmarish waste of time, especially for anyone with any kind of attention difficulties

please remove the devices from the students but provide slides

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Those lectures were the very best I had at uni. Because they were meant to be copied it allowed for two important effects: you process things very differently when writing with you hand, and just copying rather than transliteration from a slide say means you can focus on what is said and what's going on with the math.

For me this meant I recalled it way better. I hardly looked at the notes afterwards, but writing them down were crucial. I also could follow the process and ask questions where I didn't understand a step. When I did review the notes, they were very well structured and thus very informative.

The absolute worst lectures I had were slide-based. I either had to focus on transliteration to notes, but that meant I had to focus on that rather than what the professor was saying. And if I did the opposite I didn't write notes and thus could hardly recall the details if at all.

If you have attention difficulties perhaps uni isn't the place for you.

As someone with attention difficulties who eventually decided to leave uni and pursue another path:

I'm saddened that my culture has formed me into a person whose first reaction to your comment was "wow, that's harsh" - because I mentally (and unwarrantedly) translated your comment into something like "if you have attention difficulties perhaps you should just accept that you are a low-value human who is hard class-locked out of many of life's joys and you should (quickly) figure out how to live in the way that least inconveniences your betters."

And my brain does this even though I'm gainfully employed and comfortable and happy (happy modulo general anxiety re climate, politics, war, and future generations)

My second reaction to your comment was more like "bingo, but it sure would be nice to have more clear directions about where one's actual place is." And it sure seems like there might be more such places and they'd be easier to find in a culture whose incentives were slightly (or significantly) different than those of mine (USA).

Truer then you know, however it's essentially a requirement in this day and age.

This is awful advice… Academia, specifically STEM, is already oversaturated with people on the opposite side of the spectrum from “attention difficulties” but are otherwise only above-average people intellectually. They were able to follow the beaten path to the letter all their lives, but are not really capable of making meaningful contributions to their field. We should be filtering these people out more not less.

That can work both ways for every brilliant person there is also the completely antisocial brilliant person whom cannot work within groups. One of the best mathematician's I worked with just could not work with other people eventually, he was let go another just could not follow instructions he tried to do too much and he was also let go from our design department. Both did made it through school and we’re qualified.

as somebody with attention difficulties... every college/gradschool lecture i've ever attended has been:

1. pay attention for the first 5-10 minutes. I'm really going to try this time!

2. hear something interesting, and your mind starts wandering

3. uhoh, i have no idea what the lecture is talking about now. i'll just keep daydreaming. don't even think about raisigin your hand to ask a question because it'll reveal that you haven't been listening.

4. go home and read the textbook to figure learn the content

Uni and high-school are not the same.

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