Art Cordova
Staff Writer
“We are all the schoolboy, looking for that motivation,” a passing joke from Dr. Alex Plato, professor of philosophy, which perfectly encapsulated a sentiment shared by many on campus that extra credit opportunities are a great motivator for fueling talk attendance.
The joke suggests that an effective college student will seek any opportunity to improve his grade, and here, it means hunting after any extra credit opportunities available.
Dr. Scott Hahn, professor of theology, would grant five-points of extra credit for anyone who would attend his St. Paul Center lectures, but while this certainly led me to go to talks late into the night, what about the rest of campus?
Going out to Franciscan University’s rosary circle, I took interviews from anyone willing to share their experience with extra credit talks, and what I found was quite interesting.
Speaking to the famous event organizer and the club lead for Cooking up the Culture, Junior, education major Peter Lim, he said “I just went because it was free opportunity … it depends on the major; it depends on the class. I went to different talks on communication, and I went to branch out my expertise.”
He went on to add, “Towards the end of the semester, at crunch time, that’s when people take extra credit opportunities… by going to the senior theses and answering three questions about the talks.”
Trying to narrow down the impact, he was asked how taking these opportunities helped him, and he replied, “It brought me from a B to an A. Literally letter grade jumping!”
When asking junior theology major Steven Giacobbe, the former coordinator of Living Stones Household, whether he had ever taken an extra credit opportunity for a talk, he replied, “Yes!” He later specified he had been to “around fifteen to twenty. I went because a lot of professors offered it and it’s not too hard of a way to get extra credit.”
Keeping all of this in mind, there have been those who have benefited from these talks and the extra credit offered, but let’s not put the cart before the horse. We still need to ask the main question, is extra credit itself fueling talk attendance?
Asking the student body whether they went to these talks for extra credit, I gathered several responses that admitted to going to at least one talk for extra credit. I heard from undergraduate Eleanor, “Yes,” she then added, “several over the years.”
Another undergraduate of note, Dominic had said he had gone to “two or three” for the sake of the credit, but that “It’s mostly about time management.”
Recalling Dominic’s words, it seemed there was a strong consensus that extra credit could do little in the wake of a busy undergraduate schedule, as there were many students who had also told me that they had never been to any talk simply due to their busy schedules.
While many of us may struggle to get to talks we are not particularly interested in, and fewer among us have the time, extra credit may be just the thing to push us in that direction.
Even if just two or three people go out of the thirty offered in a class, can we not say that fuel has been added to these talks? These opportunities specifically target the group that is most on the fence about going, and with the busy lives of college students, just as Plato and Hahn suggested, a mercenary’s reward may be just the thing to expose a student to a talk that a professor may deem useful.
This is an easy way for a student to squeeze in a few more points in a class they may be struggling with; a cushion that may help them. Explore the great wealth of ideas we have presented on campus and enjoy the rewards your professors are willing to give you for giving up that little bit of time of yours.