Tuesday, July 7, 2009

The Future Calls

I think today was my favorite day in class, to date. First of all, my lab group did very well on our experiment today. After a week of struggling in labs and horrible experimental errors, we finally seem to be getting the hang of it. See? I told them we would get better. And even in the pre-lab lecture and the post-lab discussion, I didn't have to struggle as much as before in order to follow along.

Secondly, I found the seminar to be very interesting. It incorporated a lot of biology, yet retained some form of chemistry. It is more interesting and easier to follow a lecture when you actually understand the terminology and the basic concepts. Our speaker's lab group is currently researching the ATP synthase functions in a cell's intermembrane, and I found the speech about it to be quite interesting. After class, because I didn't get a chance to ask her, I approached my professor, Luis Avila, and asked him about the specific area of science she is in. Apparently, she counts as both a biophysicist and a biochemist. He explained a bit more of her work to me, and how she got to her currtn are of expertise.

In all honesty, if I had not taken AP Bio, I would not have been able to take as much out of the seminar as I did. Actually, at one point I wished that Mr. Hudson was in the room with us and asking questions and discussing more. By listening to a discussion by two such people, I know I would have learned loads more.

Thanks, Mrs. Kronenberg, for the collegematch site. I've actually completed it a few times before, but it has been a while and I was sure that some aspects of the survey would have changed for me. Looking through the final list, I became excited because there were several colleges that I have arleady been thinking of applying to. I found Boston College, Columbia University, and Harvard, just to name a few. I don't know too much about Boston College, so I still need to do research on that, but I visited Harvard and now I'm living in Columbia. Those are actually at the top of my list of desired colleges, and I'm really glad they showed up in my search. At first I wasn't sure I would like to live in Columbia, for a number of undeveloped reasons, but after a week and a half, I know for sure that I would be so happy to attend college here. In addition, I love their pedagogical approach, which is called global perspective. I discussed this in one of my first posts on this blog, actually. And Harvard is right there with Columbia at the top. I fell in love with Boston the minute I stepped foot there, and I fell in love with Harvard as well. It's actually a bit funny, because beforehand I wasn't particularly interested in Harvard, despite it's prestige. But learning about it through a student-led tour and through a discussion with two current students and an entertaining professor really opened up my eyes and my heart.

1 comment:

Don Gosney said...

Jackie,

Let me get to the important stuff first. You say you don’t know anything about Boston College? The only thing you need to know is: Doug Flutie. I’ll save you the time of looking him up but he was the Heisman Trophy Award winning quarterback for Boston College back in the mid 80’s and although he was always considered too small, he became one of the best professional quarterbacks in history. What else do you need to know about Boston College?

Your evaluation of your class, Jackie, is similar to what I’m reading in other blogs. Even some of the other classes are getting similar comments. The recurring comments seem to relate to how the class is covering stuff that you haven’t been properly prepared for.

This concerns me, Jackie, and perhaps we need to take a closer look at the class descriptions and make sure that our students fully understand what they’re getting themselves into before packing them off to the East Coast.

What do you think?

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