Three hour classes seem to be a part of the everyday struggle here at Pace and most students are fed up with it. No one really understands why classes need to be three hours long in the first place. There is a lot that can be covered in one hour and twenty-five minute classes or even two hour classes to be reasonable, but three hours is just too much.

The New York Times published an article last January that contained a study of the attention span of people in this day and age. The study was conducted by the Microsoft Corporation and consisted of a survey taken by 2,000 participants.

Microsoft studied the brain activity using electroencephalograms, which are electrical currents within the brain, to observe the attention span of the participants. After the results came in they concluded that the average attention span of an individual is eight seconds. That is shorter than the attention span of a goldfish, with theirs being nine seconds.

If a person can’t fully pay attention for more than eight seconds, then how do you expect them to concentrate in a three hour class? That’s a tall task for a lot of people. The world is turning into a digital notebook more and more every day and that just means that our attention span will continue to decrease and eventually hour and a half classes will become to long for students.

I have personally had four three hour classes in the two full semesters I’ve been here at Pace and in each of those classes the professors never kept me there for the full three hours. I know one professor that told the class straight up that he doesn’t know why they give him a class for three hours when he knows he doesn’t need to teach the full three hours, nor will he keep us there for the full three hours. I’ve talked to other students and they feel the same way.

The most common three hour classes are 6:00pm-9:00pm and 1:20pm-4:20pm. 6:00pm-9:00pm classes are brutal because it cuts your day short. Who wants to do homework or really anything after a 9:00pm? Once that class is over, you are ready to go eat, and relax until it’s time to hit the sheets. 1:20-4:20 classes takes up the middle of the day.

After those classes, you feel like you’re trying to play catch up and get as much work done as you can, so that you have some down time from the stress that college can put on you. I have experience with both of these three hour classes and every time I get out of them, I feel like the day is lost and there is nothing I can do about it. Three hour classes are too long, and the ones that are scheduled at the end of the day are just too much. Let’s put a stop to the nonsense.