Concordia College is a liberal arts college that really helps students get a well rounded education during their time here. Not only do you take classes of interest to you (for your major) but you are also required to take classes outside of that. For most that includes one final capstone course in the last year you are a studen here. It is a senior course that requires a lot of writing and is often discussion based with heavy reading involved. For me however I am required becuase of my major and minor to take two capstone courses before graduation. Neurochemistry was my first capstone experience.
This semester I took my first of two capstone courses I am required to take before graduating in the spring. To be honest I never thought I would like a chemistry or biology course because they have always been very intimidating to me. Taking neurochemestry though was a great choice. I have learned so many things throughout the duration of this course and am so thankful I got to experience it. I am a psychology major with a neuroscience minor, so to me signing up for this class was a bit of a scare, but once we got going with the curriculm it was fantastic and a lot different then I had immagined it to be. This was not an ordinary class where you got a lecture, took notes, and handed in assignments. No, this class was mainly discussion based making the class and professor interact as if we are all equals learning together. We would all come to class Monday’s having read and prepared questions for an assigned article (these articles were not easy to read and were very difficult to understand with all of the scientific jargon thrown into them). But then every Monday we would discuss what questions and concerns we had about the article and would all get assigned a topic within the article to prepare for Wendsday’s class. Then on Wendsday we would all get together and “teach” every other person about the topic we had been assigned. This helped many of us answer questions to what we did not understand while reading the article. On Friday’s we would hold discussion about everything we had learned about the topic that week (anything we found surprising or intriging about the article and would discuss from there). Everyone got two chances to lead discussion throughout the semester and that not only helped us build confidence in our leadership skills but also gave us an opportunity to speak out if we had not had chances to in the last week. Friday’s were by far my favorite days in this class because I felt like I had actually learned something at the end of the week (as opposed to just memorizing for a test, not hearing anything in lecture, etc.). We also took two exams that were more like in class assignments with a take home portion attatched. They were tough enough but they did not feel like you were taking a test at all. It was applying what you have learned in class to an article that was given and explaing what you thought was going on in that article. Then for the take home part you got to look at the entire article to see if your hypothesis was correct. If it wasn’t then you got to justify why you were wrong. It was all essay and really made you think about everything we had talked about in class. Over all I really enjoyed this class and my capstone experience it was great!
The End is in Sight: My Capstone Experience
