All of last semester, I never went to see my bio prof. Who tries his hardest to be there for his students. Seriously: he has office hours 4 days a week. But second semester bio just doesnt make sense in the same way semester 1 did to me. I am detail oriented like a motherfluffer. Small biology concepts are easy to nail down. Big biology leaves so much open to interpretation. I was a little unclear on something (youll see in a minute - but first, a story).
I tend to sleep in weird cycles. Stay up all night, go to class, come home and nap late for 4 hours, stay up all night...repeat, for a few days, and then I get so exhausted that I just pass out at 9pm and wake up well rested the next day, and the cycle repeats itself. But night is my most productive time, so I tend to stay up for schoolwork. One time, I had been literally up all night the night before class. I then went to lecture, and answered a question he posed to the class (this is kind of a rare occurence for me). I had the right answer, but the voice I used to answer the question was a quiet one. I was running on fumes. So instead of reinforcing the fact that I had the right answer, I got jokingly chastised for lacking confidence.
Little did he know I was not lacking confidence, I was merely about to die of exhaustion. School means alot to me. I like to know what the hell I'm doing. I think that a little too much of my self worth is wrapped up in my performance in these classes right now.
So then, for Bio 2, when I couldnt figure out how to calculate genotypic and allelic frequencies by looking at bands, I knew I had to go get help. So I went to office hours and he was so incredibly helpful. I dont think Ive had a more helpful teacher in my entire life. It was mindblowing. And next semester promises to be heavy for me. Maybe it wouldn't be for other people, but it's heavy for me: Gen Chem 2 and Physics 1. But this teacher, is such a fantastic teacher, and I feel like I am nowhere near done learning what he has to teach. So I'm going to take his genetics class, just to take it. Call me a damned fool. But It has been 10 years since I had a teacher that took the prize home for awesome professor.
I dont know how to explain it. To be a good prof requires a lot of things. Not only do you have to know the material inside and out (obviously), but you have to be good at teaching it. This seems DUH at first thought, but how many crappy professors have we all had? Why is it so hard to be a good prof? You have to be good at explaining it, you have to be patient with those that dont understand it, you have to be able to improvise and come up with 5 different ways of saying the same thing in hopes that one of these explanations will bring light to the darkness (and there is no worse feeling in school than feeling like youre too stupid to comprehend something), you have to care enough about your students' success to make yourself available to assist them in their understanding. You have to care.
It all boils down to the fact that the best professors are the ones students trust as human beings first, then as teachers. So with that being said, I'm taking genetics for no good reason other than to glean some more knowledge from this individual that I hope never stops teaching.
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