When I first signed up for Neurochemistry last spring, I simply took it because it was hitting two birds with one stone. I could use it as my elective course for my chemistry major and also complete my capstone class with it. I hadn’t taken any other neuroscience classes throughout my career at Concordia and considered my knowledge of the brain to be pretty minimal compared to others I knew would be in my class. Needless to say, I was quite intimidated. Not only because I thought I might be behind my classmates knowledge-wise, but also because discussion based classes have never been my favorite. I’ve never been one that enjoyed having a class-wide discussion and arguing viewpoints on something with another classmate. My favorite types of classes have always been the professor in front of the class giving a lecture for the entire period. To some, this is excruciatingly boring, but I’ve always been someone who learned better – and preferred – to just sit and listen. For that reason, I was nervous for Neurochemistry and having to “force” myself to get into the discussion. But after an entire semester of the most discussion-based class I have ever taken, I’ve learned they aren’t always so bad.
At the beginning of the semester, we had several class periods discussing background information and learning things we would need to know to help us understand most of the papers we would be reading. This was immensely helpful for students like me who didn’t have a good background to begin with. Right away my fear of not knowing everything was gone. As the semester progressed and we read many very in-depth papers and covered topics from autism to marijuana, I came to realize that not knowing everything is okay. There wasn’t a single paper we read where the researchers understood every pathway or mechanism. In fact, most of the time it was a “this happens in this disease but we really don’t know why” case. As a class, we tried to take each piece of the puzzle that was known and formulate a way those pieces might fit together. Each week, every member in the class would tackle a particular topic and then share what they found to the rest of the class. It was amazing how little we would know about a disorder, even after reading the paper, but once we dug a little deeper and taught the class what we had learned, we began to have a really good grasp on the topic. The amount of learning in one single week was astonishing. For a class that didn’t have your typical lectures and quizzes and tests, I sure learned more than I could have thought possible. I think this truly highlights the idea of learning for school and learning because you are curious. I wanted to know what was happening in the brain in each one of these disorders because it was interesting, not because I had to. In addition, as the semester went on, I grew to love – instead of my usual hate – our Friday discussions where we could discuss not only the science behind that week’s topic, but also the social and ethical sides.
All in all, I really enjoyed neurochemistry. For a class that scared me at first, I realized that class discussions aren’t all that bad. I loved learning so many knew things and sharing my own findings with classmates and my professor, who was more like another student in the class and learned right alongside us. I saw connections between neurochemistry and other fields, like anatomy and biochemistry and psychology. I was able to discuss with my peers the social and ethical implications that certain disorders of the brain have on our society and what our next step should be in trying to treat or cure these disorders. This class went so much further than just the science, which ultimately is what a liberal arts education is all about. My capstone class certainly capped off my education in true Concordia fashion. I came to realize that not knowing everything is okay – it simply shows us how much we have left to discover and that we really are only at the beginning.
The End That Shows We’re Really Only at the Beginning
