--- 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 > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement.  by [Dan Kedmey](https://time.com/author/dan-kedmey/)  ## Dan Kedmey Oct 28, 2014 4:00 PM UTC  by [Dan Kedmey](https://time.com/author/dan-kedmey/)  ## Dan Kedmey Oct 28, 2014 4:00 PM UTC Students at the University of Pennsylvania will [soon](http://www.english.upenn.edu/Courses/Undergraduate/2015/Spring/ENGL111.301) 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) 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"}}]}] ```