Penn Course Requires Students 'Waste Time' Online To Earn College Credit
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Most people waste hours on the internet anyway, but a new course at Penn is encouraging students to do it – for credit.
Aptly-named "Wasting time on the Internet," the real-life course will be offered by the Ivy League school's English department during the upcoming spring 2015 semester.
And if you were wondering what students will, um, DO in the class – which is apparently a requirement for those majoring in creative writing – you don't have to veer far from the course title to figure it out.
"Students will be required to stare at the screen for three hours, only interacting through chat rooms, bots, social media and listservs."
Sounds...stimulating.
Of course, Penn probably wouldn't let students off the hook that easily. It seems there is some reading and discussion involved.
"To bolster our practice, we'll explore the long history of the recuperation of boredom and time-wasting through critical texts about affect theory, ASMR, situationism and everyday life by thinkers such as Guy Debord, Mary Kelly Erving Goffman, Betty Friedan, Raymond Williams, John Cage, Georges Perec, Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefevbre, Trin Minh-ha, Stuart Hall, Sianne Ngai, Siegfried Kracauer and other," the course description reads.
Even so, "distraction, multi-tasking, and aimless drifting is mandatory."
Sign me up!
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