Capstone classes are all designed to be just that, a capstone. They are supposed to take what you have learned in four years of lectures, tests, and study groups and apply them to one goal. In Neurochemistry, that goal was to find, read, understand, and finally communicate scientific literature. I’m sure we all thought we had enough practice at researching and reading articles to be proficient but I think we all learned that it is a very hard skill to master.
The most important that this capstone taught me was how to communicate novel and abstract scientific ideas. To take a paper and be able to digest it is one thing, but to be able to tell anyone, whether they have a scientific mind or not, what you have just learned takes a much more refined set of skills. Not only is it a more challenging thing to perform, but communication is becoming more and more relevant and necessary in society today. One timely example of the power of scientific communication involves the “Vaccines cause autism” misconception. A few people claiming to know something that they actually know nothing about could have been more readily dispelled if the scientific community was more proficient in the communication of the facts.
Because interdisciplinary communication is so important I would recommend this class to students of any major. The fact that we all worked together to tackle the very difficult concepts of neurochemistry makes the challenging aspect of this class a lot less daunting. The teaching of this class fosters the teamwork and connection-making necessary to learn the material instead of just going with the flow. Overall, this was a very fun and positive experience and the lessons and skills learned will stick with me for a long time.
The Value of a Capstone
