Persevering Learner

I registered for biology 200 as a biochemistry major, knowing that I only had to take it because it was a requirement, little did I know it would become so much more to me. It was taught by Ben Wiggins, and professor who I noticed had done research not only in biology, but on education in classes like biology. Unlike the first biology in the series, this one was more technical and focused on pathways and details. This was the ‘molecular, cellular, and developmental’ focused biology class in the series. After the first week of class I could already tell that this professor was unlike any other I would have and had a profound impact on my understanding of the subject and love for biology.
This class taught me how important it was to be involved and collaborative when the material became challenging. What we were learning interested me, but it also made me realize how completely different it was from the first biology in the series, and that I was going to seriously have to change my study habits. Not only was the material different, but the test were different than anything I had done. Instead of giving us a study guide, they gave us the actually exam, only the questions had ‘blanked’ out key information. Because of this, I learned that teamwork and communication were going to be key in doing well in this class. This required my attendance to office hours every week, and creation of multiple study groups.

Tasks Accomplished

Increased my collaboration

Created 2 study groups with different people that I met with at least once before every test
Made new connections with people through these study groups
Attended every one of the professor’s office hours and some with TA’s too
Made friends with the Professor, which resulted in me getting a research position with one of this colleagues

Became more consistent with my studying

Reviewed material after every lecture
Made a concrete study schedule

Obtained consistently exceptional grades throughout the quarter

Instead of dipping low on some, and high on the others, my midterms were consistent
Stayed up to date with all of the reading quizzes

Competencies Gained

Self-understanding

This class completely changed my understanding and impression of biology as a whole by introducing me to new aspects that were completely different than the first biology. Because of this I found a new love for the subject that I didn’t know existed and ultimately resulted in me changing my major to biology. I applied after this class and got in to the major! The molecular side of biology left me thinking deeper about the world and life and how everything functions. I left class everyday with curiosity and questions every day and knew that this is what I wanted to spend the rest of my college career learning about.

Plan

The increased difficulty of this class required increased planning for. The most impactful part of my new study plan, besides collaboration, was reviewing the material after each lecture. I always had professors suggesting that we do this, but I never quite made time for it. Reviewing the material like this helped it stick in my memory easier, which made it less stressful when the midterms came around. Because there was a midterm every other week in this class, it also required me to plan my work for other classes around it more carefully. I utilized my planner notebook like I never had before, sitting down every Sunday evening to look at the tasks I needed to get done in the week ahead, and making sure to a lot time to have a daily review for the biology material.

Collaboration

Because we were given the test ahead of time, minus the key words in the questions, we could kind of get a sense of what direction the questions were headed. However what I realized was everyone had a different take on what could be the possible words in the ‘blanked’ out region that would help us know how to answer the question. Creating study groups and going to office hours allowed me to collaborate with many other student who all had different perspectives. We would propose a topic that the question would be on, and then each say what our short answer would be if that was the question. Until this class I did not realize how important collaboration was in discussing different ideas, I definitely would have done a lot worse in this class without those resources!

Reflection and Application

Because of the difficulty of this class, and my change in study habits it took a bit to perfect it. Once I would take a midterm I learned how important it was to go through my test to see what I did wrong or right, and how I could use this to alter my study plans for next time. I started to notice that they looked for specific key phrases in answers and was able to use that knowledge the next time I studied for a midterm. I also learned what parts of my answers weren’t scoring any points, and what not to waste my time writing out.

Mentoring

I quickly grew to like Professor Wiggin’s teaching style as well as his interaction with students. I will never forget walking out of office hours early one day to get to an appointment, and him saying “Bye Katie!”. Though I had never introduced myself to him, he knew my name and remembered it when he saw me. This showed me that someone was recognizing my hard work, and had a much larger impact on me than he probably knew. My hard work paid off enough that after this class he emailed me and a few others saying that he would he would write us a letter of recommendation should we need it. Getting this email was also a huge relief because that is a big stressor for pre-med students like me!

Initiative

After this class I have implemented these study habits in the many more biology classes that I have been taking for my major and have proven to be very useful. Because of this class I also changed my major to something I am much more interested in and am finding very applicable to my future and my current research position. I have also learned that no matter how much you think you can do something yourself, there is nothing to replace the collaboration and communication with other people. What I have learned from this class completely transcends the classroom and has helped me find my passion.

Resiliency

This class also helped me learn that an essential value to have is being able to bounce back when things aren't going your way. A lot of the time when I find myself lost in class or getting overwhelmed with material, this makes me stressed out and actually less inclined to do any work for the class. However, I have learned now that this only means that I need to fight that feeling of stress and anxiety and get involved more. As mentioned, a great way I found myself doing this was having study groups, because I had my friends from those groups to keep me accountable in being able to contribute to conversations and problems during our meetings.

Thinking Ahead

Only when reflecting on my experience in this class did I realize how applicable the material I was learning was in real life. A lot of the chemistry and other courses i had taken prior to this was mostly knowledge that I did not need after the course. However, after this course I found myself recognizing bits and pieces of the material I learned in Biology 200 in classes like biochemistry, a biology lab class, and even my own lab where I work. Now I realize that it is especially important to be learning things to know them for the future and life, and not just to know them for a test.