Participating in the neurochemistry capstone course has been an excellent culmination of the life skills I’ve learned as a student at Concordia. While I still have one semester until I’m officially done, finishing my capstone experience really brings a sense of completion to my college education. Namely, the neurochemistry class has validated my love for learning, opened my eyes to new connections between disciplines, and taught me how to influence the real world with my education.
One aspect that was unique about neurochemistry was how individually driven the learning was. While this certainly created challenges, it was actually such a freeing and positive experience. At the beginning of the semester, I struggled to manage the effort and time I was spending on the class. Without any clearly stated assignment to complete, I found myself often working too long and getting trapped in rabbit holes as I kept looking into new topics. By the end of reading one paper, I had often inquired into multiple others and was two or three steps removed from my first research topic. I’m thankful that I can become lost in the research, but it’s vitally important I learn to extract the most important information and leave time for other important tasks. Learning these skills will be necessary in the high volume and fast paced learning of medical school and in managing time for family as an older adult.
My time in neurochemistry has helped me develop the skills to be an efficient individualized learner. Because so much of our learning and progress in the class was outside of class, taking initiative on my own was necessary. Throughout the class, I improved at pinpointing the information that would benefit the rest of the class most, and did so in an amount of time that left room for my other work. In the end, the capstone experience taught me to manage my love of learning. I have always had a love of learning, but I needed to learn how to use this motivation and passion most effectively.
I also enjoyed my capstone experience because of the people I shared it with. We had a comfortable mix of chemistry, biology, psychology, and neuroscience majors, and this made our discussions in class incredibly diverse and exciting. After the first week, I realized that I was tending to fixate on chemistry aspects of the scientific journals we were reading and was glossing over the psychological techniques and learning models. This was hindering my ability to fully understand the topics at hand because I was missing key points of the story. The psychology students were a great resource in researching these topics further and teaching the class about them.
All of this opened my eyes to effective collaboration in tackling difficult tasks. In past classes, I might have overworked myself in an attempt to understand the psychology topics on my own. I inevitably would have become frustrated because I lacked the background knowledge necessary to understand the topics, and my understanding would have suffered because of it. What I learned in neurochemistry was to let experts be experts. The psychology majors knew how to explain behavioral paradigms, and I knew a thing or two about intracellular signaling cascades. When we worked together instead of “glossing” over one another’s topics, it led to a great sense of learning and teamwork that improved the experience and my retention. Having a willingness to collaborate with other experts will be something I carry with me forever. I think it will help me to treat patients more effectively and be a more responsible citizen.
Finally, the greatest part of my capstone experience was the community action project I completed with my group. Throughout my entire educational career, I’ve always dreaded group projects and the big group project in neurochemistry was no exception. I fully expected it to be like other group projects where my group doesn’t want to meet until a few days prior. Additionally, I usually have ended up doing the majority of the work to research, edit, and organize the group. As a result, I’ve always come out of group projects with a feeling that I would have been better off doing it on my own. Many times, I even feel like I would have started it sooner, done better research, and created a better final project. My community action project was the opposite experience and it made me understand how much more you can achieve with a great group.
With the talents of each and every person and effective communication, my group spurred real change on our campus. We planned and facilitated a staff and faculty workshop for handling student anxiety. Reflecting on the entire experience, I can’t help but be amazed by all the people we contacted and how many times we met as a group. From early September until mid-November, the seven of us found time to meet as a group every Sunday evening.
At our first meetings, we discussed our visions for the project. Then, we went to work contacting people and organizations to collaborate with. Amazingly, nearly every week each of us had someone we were contacting and corresponding with. Whether it was contacting the counseling center to present at our workshop, or meeting with the graphic designer about our sticker design, each and every week the project took another step forward.
An especially exciting and pivotal milestone for us was receiving funding from our student government association. This really made the entire experience real for me because this was real money we were getting to use. With this money, we paid for the catered food, the conference room with set up, and the stickers and brochures printed from a professional print shop. In the end, we had a great turnout of 40 to 50 professors (due to our tireless advertisement efforts) and provided a much needed service for our college. Now that it’s done, I’m exhausted, yet completely satisfied and proud of what we achieved. The entire experience has put into perspective the incredible dedication and work it takes to plan a great event. All the work is worth it, however, when you hear the positive feedback and see the changes and awareness you’ve raised.
Ultimately, I loved the class because it was a self-driven collaboration between all of the students and our professor. We made the class what it was through our hard-work and collaboration. This experience has absolutely helped me to mature into a more self-driven and efficient learner. These traits have ultimately put me on the right path to tackling life’s problems on my own.
Caps Off to My Concordia Capstone
