You stumble into your 9:30 a.m. class just in time. Well, it's actually 9:34. Same thing.

You duck through the aisles and take a seat in the back half of the classroom, whip out your laptop, and get comfy. The professor is talking about immigration in England or China, or something, but your best friend just texted you that, OMG Jake invited her to that party this weekend and do you think this counts as a date? It has to be a date. Yup, definitely a date. Pressing matters take precedence. Right? Wrong.

I can't exempt myself from this all the time, of course, but we're in college and we have been for a while. If our go-to tactic is to slump in the back of the classroom and check Facebook or TFM for an hour, then we don't deserve the privilege of a first-class education.

We get to attend classes at a top university with distinguished professors, and some college students don't even have to pay their tuition! Mom and Dad help them out, twiddling their thumbs in their empty nests while wondering which of the biology courses worth hundreds of dollars you're reading for.

Professors notice; they don't just hand out PhDs to anyone who can finish a dissertation. No matter how unbiased they might claim to be, watching you nod off while they try to share their life's passions will affect your participation or attendance grade. And what about those recommendation letters? Mom can't write those. 

What ever happened to being a try-hard? What happened to reading the extra suggested readings and then showing up to office hours to chat about them? When did we all decide that getting the high score on a test or challenging the professor's reasoning was uncool?

Let's drop the, "dorks are weird," mentality. Being smart will get you places, and working hard will get you even further. Show your professors you care about what they have to say, even if you don't. You picked your classes, and someone is paying hard earned money so you can read expensive textbooks and sit through lectures by esteemed faculty. 

Hard work will pay off, especially if you need your future employer or graduate school admissions adviser to think you're worth taking seriously, because you are.