Without Generality, there is no meaning;
without Detail, there is no significance
In BI250 this term you will encounter general statements – concepts – concerning the biology of eukaryotic cells and their organelles, as well as many “facts” – details – about these entities, their structures and their functions; also about the principles and details of the methods used to study them. Your task will be to master the concepts and details at the level they are presented in text, web sites and lecture and laboratory. These sources present different perspectives of cell biology to enhance your comprehension, and appreciating these perspectives requires your active participation.
How should you study cell biology? I recently polled a group of BI250 students who did exceptionally well on their first interim exams, to determine what study tactics they used and could recommend to other students. Here’s what I found:
-
All but one of the students did the required reading before the material was covered in lecture! (The one student who did not, reported he read the relevant portions of the text within hours after the lecture.) Most took notes as they read, especially with respect to bold-faced or italicized words. Often these notes were reported to be very sketchy.
-
All took notes during class, and most found in-class note-taking easier if they read the text and became familiar with the material before hand.
You will find mastering cell biology requires more than careful reading, attentive listening and thorough note-taking, however. While these actions are certainly necessary for comprehension, they will prove insufficient aids for learning cell biology. To master cell biology, even at an introductory level, you must “work” the material, as the sculptor works her clay or as the poet crafts his verse; indeed, as athletes exercise their muscles. Or, more aptly, as you would learn a foreign language at Middlebury! The more details you learn, the richer will be your “vocabulary”, and the more you actively use your expanding vocabulary to think about the details, the more you will understand and appreciate the concepts (and their limitations). In other words, “talk the talk!” (And in the laboratory, “walk the walk!”)
In my survey, I also found the abler students more actively engaged the material:
-
All said they rewrote their notes, integrating those made in class with those drawn from the text; the level of detail they recorded seemed to vary greatly, however.
-
All studied the weekly problems assigned, and most wrote out answers to these problems. They also worked the problems at the end of chapters, reviewing notes and readings when necessary for the answers.
-
Most of these students also engaged cell biology idiosyncratically. One read the text aloud to herself! (Try it!) Another made up questions as she went along or modified the assigned problems by adding questions. Some reviewed the material by focusing on figures and tables, “testing” whether they could “reconstruct” the text and lectures from the pictures. Several consistently tried to relate what they had covered to “real-life” experiences (using clinical or ecological examples).
-
Although each student studied alone, they all periodically got together with other students, with one or several, to discuss the material and, especially, to solve problems found in the text and in past exams.
Or as a first-year student several years ago remarked: “The exams got easier as I began to think about the material I was reading in my text and notes and hearing in class.”
The problems in Studying Cell Biology are provided in the spirit of stimulating your thinking about cell biology this term. Most – those with points assigned - have been derived from past examinations, as have the answers that are provided for some of the questions (and are reproduced anonymously with the permission of the responding students). Do take the time to work on problems each week, do commit yourself to answers by writing something down in the spaces provided, and do see them as opportunities for working with your fellow students. (It is not at all accidental that words and prose are the bases of our communication with one another and one of several ways we think about reality.)
Two cautions, however, based on the kinds of incomplete or inappropriate answers I recall past students provided when these questions appeared on examinations. Firstly, answering each problem requires information you should be learning this term in BI250. The problems are not designed to test your IQ, your general aptitude or what you've learned in other courses, and if you find yourself deriving an answer “out of thin air” or mainly from material you’ve learned elsewhere, you’re missing the point of the question or, more likely, haven't learned something you should have! (If nothing comes immediately to mind, ask yourself: “What the hell is he looking for?” And the answer is that I am almost always testing mechanisms of how cells live, based on the details and concepts of what’s been covered in BI250 to date.) Memorize the jargon, develop a working vocabulary and “Talk the talk!”
Secondly, in answering a question or in addressing a problem, resist the temptation to provide everything you know about a particular subject or, more subtly, to change the question or problem to fit “your memorized answer.” Yes, you must memorize details about cells, their organelles and the methods used to study them, but you must be able to do more! You must also use your knowledge creatively, synthesizing what you have learned to analyze problems you haven’t seen before.
As you think about cell biology in a problem-oriented manner, you will come to realize many of the problems you encounter have several reasonable answers, and more importantly, you will begin to appreciate that "the facts” and “the concepts” may not be all they’re cracked up to be, by texts or teachers. If you begin to appreciate the tentativeness, the tenuousness and the hypothetical nature of our knowledge, then you will have come a long way towards learning cell biology in the best Liberal Arts tradition.
Problem-solving may be hard (at first) but it’s also fun, and it’s what scientists enjoy doing! Have fun!