“Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward.”

This quote by Oscar Wilde offers a lesson to students who are bored by studying. You can complain that your teacher is world class, at curing insomnia. You can complain that the examples used in class were excellent, 50 years ago. You can complain that doing well on tests is irrelevant, since employers rarely ask about the grades in a specific test. Even if all of that is true, serious actions involve opportunity costs: complaining persuasively requires an awareness of the alternative.

The alternatives to classroom learning are not necessarily nice:

• The teacher may be boring, but your definition of boring and confusing might change after being forced to listen to 10 poorly organized PowerPoint presentations in a day.
• No test question is exactly like the problems that you will meet in your future, but a CEO is unlikely to put a student in charge of a project where a failing grade implies that real people lose jobs.
• That 500-page textbook may be uninspiring, especially when the course outline reveals “intended learning outcomes” on day one, but the exhilaration associated with experience is not always pleasant.

One overlooked difference between real-world experience and test questions is that test questions are designed to have manageable answers. In contrast, experience teaches the importance of asking questions. Insightful questions reveal special cases or exceptions to the general rule. Sometimes, it is not immediately obvious which questions should be asked. Classes can teach the same lessons but experience, accompanied by great personal or financial expense, is more memorable.

So, my advice is to learn as much as possible while in school. That advice does not necessarily mean that you should try to get 100% on each test or assignment (unless you are applying for a scholarship or marks-based admission). Some suggest that your goal should be 85% [1] [2].

The distinction between “experience” and “classroom” is not an either/or choice. There are in-between solutions: opportunities outside of class time, often in cooperation with local business leaders, which surprisingly few students use. Especially if your goal is not grades, but learning, you would have the time to use these opportunities to prove whether you are ready for something more than classroom tests. These opportunities also help an individual to define or develop their personal competitive advantage.

For the future, the growing power of Generative AI (GenAI) may force instructors to update their courses to include more experiential activities. Students in senior-level courses would be expected to already know definitions and to do simple calculations, causing unprepared students to struggle. To the extent that GenAI makes cheating easier and more rewarding, more students may come to senior level courses unprepared. The consequences for an unprepared student are obvious: during a job interview, you cannot be seen asking GenAI for the answer to everything.

That experience may teach students which lessons they should have learned in class.