[isaacimagine]

At MIT, lectures must follow MIT time; all lectures are expected to start 5 minutes after the hour, and end 5 minutes before. Funnily this means each lecture is about one microcentury long. Exams are the one exception, they start on the dot.

https://oge.mit.edu/mit-time/

[saubeidl]

At most European universities, it is practice to start lectures cum tempore, i.e. with time, meaning 15 minutes after formal calendar time.

It'll say 10:00 c.t. on the event, meaning it actually starts at 10:15.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_quarter_(class_timing...

[BearOso]

At a US university, I had an large elective class where the professor refused to start until things had "settled down", and he said he was going to add that time to the end to ensure he got his full 50 minutes.

I had a major-related class 10 minutes after, clear across campus, about a mile of walking. This professor was nice about it, but I was the only one coming in late at all.

So I made sure to sit in the front row of the earlier lecture, and left precisely when the class was supposed to end, leaving no doubt I had places to go.

Some people just think they set the conventions.

[barbazoo]

Odd. Over the course of my education I went to 3 different universities in the EU. Classes/lectures/labs, they all started at the advertised time and I’ve never encountered a concept of “c.t” or “s.t”. Not a formal one anyway. People “talked” about the “academic 15 minutes” but like it was a thing of the past.

[mrngm]

I've had one side of the same university campus observing the academic 15 minutes, while in one course on the other side did not... after the lunch break. So at 13:30 we started walking towards the other side of the campus (the class was "scheduled" at 13:30), but did not receive a warm welcome 10 minutes later, because the lecturer had already started at the "scheduled" time.

[moi2388]

Same. Never encountered this.

[saubeidl]

Must be a regional thing then. I've seen it all over DACH.

[esnard]

If anyone else is confused, a microcentury is apparently around 52.6 minutes long.

[saubeidl]

Microcentury sounds like somebody didn't reduce their fractions. I propose centiyear.

[xen0]

Those are not the same; one is a bit less than an hour, another is 3 and a half days.

A microcentury is 100 nanoyears if you prefer that.

[esnard]

It's actually 100 microyears!

[xen0]

Erm, yes. Yes it is...

[madcaptenor]

It's one ten-thousandth of a year but there's not a prefix for that.

[quesera]

100 microyears?