Waste of time
A lab hour is one of the worst requirements that cause students difficulty in college.
First of all every prep class that you take requires 16 hours of lab for this takes up a lot of time. When you have 6 classes and three of them are prep courses the lab hours add up to 48 hours in 16 weeks that you have to complete. These 48 hours cuts back on your other activities; one of them could be your study time. Rather than spending so much time in lab we could actually study for the class, or do the homework. If the lab hours could have been avoided the students could have done much better in class with the extra time to study.
Another lab requirement that causes students difficulty is following the lab rules. Every lab has its own rules to follow; moreover, they all are the same. I understand rules are meant to be followed, yet some of the lab rules are ridiculous. Even when you forget to write the date or heading they make you go back and fix it again. For example last week when I was in the reading lab and forgot to write the heading of the exercise they actually made me go back and fix it and I had to wait another 10 minutes in the line to get my work stamped just because I was missing a heading.
Another requirement in the lab is completing all the lab hours required for the class. You have to complete all the lab hours to pass the course it is the most important requirement. Even when you are out of 15 minutes or even a minute in the lab you don’t pass the course. last year when my cousin was just out of 20 minutes of her lab hours because she fell sick the last week of college and wasn’t able to make it to the lab; hence, she actually failed the course and had to take the same class again.
I strongly believe that cutting back some hours in the lab and making things a little lenient towards the lab rules would make student lives so much easier.