The definitive guide to skipping lectures for when you really can’t be bothered this semester

It’s Thursday morning. It’s 7:30am. You’re suffering from what you’re sure is the worst hangover you – or anyone – has ever experienced… and you’ve got to be in sat in front of a professor in an hour and a half. The thought crosses your mind: do I really have to go to this lecture?

Tactically skipping lectures is different from simply “being a wasteman”; because if you’re looking to skip all of your contact hours there’s really little point in you being at uni at all. However, you don't want an arsey email from “the department” when your name stops showing up on attendance sheets.

We've come up with a definite guide on skipping lectures because let's face it, sometimes it just isn't worth the nine grand to suffer.

A wild student hiding from responsibilities at Maughan

Is it worth it?

Just ask yourself: are you learning anything in this hour? Could you have obtained the same information from a book? Wikipedia, even? Has the lecturer prepared anything, or are they phoning it in? And just how hungover are you?

If the answers to these questions are the wrong ones, then it’s perfectly reasonable to simply sack it off and teach it to yourself in your own time.

Of course, evading the aforementioned arsey email can be tricky. Skipping the same lecture every week will inevitably draw attention to your absence. If needs must, make sure you have a mate who can sign your name in on the register.

Would you be taking notes, or would you be on Facebook?

Know your lecturer

For lecturers who take a roll call (this is usually true of seminars) or use a more thorough way of measuring attendance than just passing round a piece of paper, you may have to go the extra mile and e-mail them afterwards apologising for your absence, assuring them you’ll copy up the notes, take a few paracetamols and slink back off to bed.

You’ll find after a while that some lecturers genuinely couldn’t give the slightest of shits whether you’re there staring into space or not.

Master the art of daydreaming while looking like you're focused

Don't waste the time you've saved

Naturally, this all rests on the assumption that you will eventually teach yourself the material and some modules are less self-contained than others (i.e. missing lecture number three will make lectures numbers four through nine of every other module you’re doing incomprehensible).

Therefore, you may need to rely on lecture capture, a friend, KEATs (or an equivalent) or the library, which may be more trouble than it’s worth. Remember: we are trying to be lazy here.

If you've got no notes come exam season, it's really your own fault.

The guilt will be lost don't worry

This is ultimately the lecture-skipping philosophy in a nutshell: don’t regularly skip lectures that you find informative. That hangover may have beaten you today, but you’ve already promised yourself that you’re never drinking again, so next Thursday you’ll be in that lecture hall at 8:55am with a beaming sober smile on your face.

If the lecture really is a waste of your time, don’t feel guilty for not going. Bear in mind that, in either case, it’s on you and you alone if you realise in an exam that you’ve played yourself… and as Yoncé says, don't hurt yourself.