--- title: Education: 'Wasting Time on the Internet' Is Now an Ivy League Class description: Students at UPenn will have a novel way of fulfilling their English credit requirements in a class called "Wasting time on the internet." canonical: https://time.com/3543663/internet-education-upenn-college/ author: Dan Kedmey article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-28T16:00:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:14:08.257Z og:title: 'Wasting Time on the Internet' Is Now an Ivy League Class og:description: At the University of Pennsylvania, starting next spring og:url: https://time.com/3543663/internet-education-upenn-college/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'Wasting Time on the Internet' Is Now an Ivy League Class twitter:description: At the University of Pennsylvania, starting next spring twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # 'Wasting Time on the Internet' Is Now an Ivy League Class  by [Dan Kedmey](/author/dan-kedmey/)  ## Dan Kedmey Oct 28, 2014 4:00 PM CUT  by [Dan Kedmey](/author/dan-kedmey/)  ## Dan Kedmey Oct 28, 2014 4:00 PM CUT Students at the University of Pennsylvania will [soon](http://www.english.upenn.edu/Courses/Undergraduate/2015/Spring/ENGL111.301 "undefined") have a novel way of fulfilling an English Department requirement, thanks to a new class that’s all about the Internet. Required materials for the class, called “Wasting time on the Internet,” include a laptop and a Wi-Fi connection but notably exclude any printed material that might distract students from their mandated allotment of time-wasting. “Students will be required to stare at the screen for three hours, only interacting through chat rooms, bots, social media and listservs,” according to the course description on the university’s website, first [spotted](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/wasting-time-on-the-internet-is-now-an-actual-college-class "undefined") by Vice Motherboard. The higher purpose of the course is to shape the detritus of the Internet into meaningful works of art. As the description asks prospective students: “Could we reconstruct our autobiography using only Facebook? Could we write a great novella by plundering our Twitter feed?” Those are big questions for some of the nation’s best and brightest, who will begin to answer them this coming spring. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3543663/internet-education-upenn-college/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3543663/internet-education-upenn-college/"},"headline":"'Wasting Time on the Internet' Is Now an Ivy League Class","datePublished":"2014-10-28T16:00:13.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:14:08.257Z","description":"At the University of Pennsylvania, starting next spring","url":"https://time.com/3543663/internet-education-upenn-college/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Tech","Internet","facebook","twitter","Surfing"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Dan Kedmey","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/dan-kedmey/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3543663/internet-education-upenn-college/","name":"'Wasting Time on the Internet' Is Now an Ivy League Class"}}]}] ```