Based on my personal experience, I wouldn&#x27;t second-guess how people choose to get the most out of classes.<p>I find that really paying attention to something over an extended amount of time is hard work. Very few lecture subjects and presenters are genuinely interesting enough for it and paced well enough for it, and it also requires a certain amount of energy, which I may not always have, or have for long enough for the whole thing. So I often try to find a way to have something mildly to moderately distracting while in these lectures, like a newspaper or magazine or something. I often find computers and TV shows to be too distracting, such that I may not really hear anything, but the mild distractors help keep me focused enough to hear the important parts without my attention drifting away entirely.<p>But I also haven&#x27;t been to any lectures in a long time, because I think that they&#x27;re a terrible way of conveying information, mostly because they force a lot of people to all share the same pace. If something was paced just right for me, then it&#x27;s probably too fast and hard to follow for some people, and too slow, boring, and tough to stay focused on for others.<p>Of course, it&#x27;s also possible that the student just doesn&#x27;t care at all, and is only there to get the piece of paper, which he has been told will automatically lead to a good job.