How to sum up my semester of Neurochemistry? I’m not exactly sure… There needs to be more research done… My understanding of it is…
This class was unlike any other that I’ve taken so far. Being a science major you mostly get to learn what other people have already discovered. Theories and laws that have been researched and proven for years. Even in lab I do experiments that I already know what I should be getting.
Neuroscience is a very new field. There is a lot of knowledge about it, but there is so much more that we don’t know. Many of the papers we read and theories we looked at were very recent. A lot of times we found ourselves at a roadblock where we really couldn’t find any more information because it wasn’t out there. There wasn’t enough research on the topic to solidify any facts. There could be a lot of theories or potential, but wasn’t proven yet.
That was another cool part of all the research that we did, we got to hypothesize our own ideas. We could look at a broad spectrum of possibilities and make our own connections. Were they always correct? Maybe not. The words, “My understanding” or “I think” were never frowned upon in this class, they were encouraged. If the best scientists in the world couldn’t figure it out exactly, then why couldn’t we at least take a stab at it?
If you read a lot of articles in science you know how difficult it is to follow sometimes. There are a lot of acronyms and a lot of words that you don’t really know. There were many times I would read a paragraph, stop to think about it, and have no idea what I just read. Even walking into class I’d have paragraphs highlighted with things I didn’t understand. I became so thankful for the people in my class.
I got to meet an almost entirely new group of people. At a small school like Concordia there isn’t a ton of opportunity to take classes with people who aren’t the same age other than the core credits. Neurochemistry is a capstone class that is taken senior year, considering I am at “senior status” even though I am a junior, I got to take a class with the people I normally just see around the science building.
There were so many different minds and personalities in our small, 14 person class. It was very interesting to hear other people’s perspectives, depending on how they grew up. Every Friday we discussed the issues surrounding our topic that week. For example, what is the cause of Alzheimer’s? Is there a better way to treat it? It seemed that every week it came back to the culture of the busy American’s.
If only we would slow down, take some time to look around. This was something we all had in common. Being very driven, success seeking Cobbers we are pretty much always on the go. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is a real thing, fear of missing opportunities, fear of missing fun, and even fear of missing points. A lot of the damage came from oxidative stress. As we are always on the search for the next best thing, the next best cure, maybe it could all be solved by slowing down?
We talked a lot about death and sick people, but not in a sad way. We thought about spending more time with family and friends, making the years count instead of counting the years. As great as finding a cure would be all of us are a few years from being able to be the one who does that, so instead it was mostly about prevention and how to deal with the disease.
So what did I do in my semester of neurochemistry? I got a lot better at reading and communicating science. I figured out how to break down pictures and diagrams into an understandable way. I spent a lot of time listening and understanding other’s opinions. The most valuable lesson I learned from neurochemistry though didn’t have a lot to do with science. This course was rigorous and difficult, but take the time to slow down. The busy life style is a part of our culture and if you don’t keep up you might not make it, but it is important to make time for more than just work. It may save you in the end.
