Group Papers - Good or Bad?

Tree outside my dorm room window

                Hello everyone. As this is my last entry before you go trick-or-treating, I wish you all a very exciting Halloween. I don’t have any cool pictures to go along with this entry, but I’ll show you the amazing tree that’s outside my dorm room window. What’re you going to be for Halloween? I’m planning on dressing as a devil. It’s going to be amazing. I’ll post pictures in my next blog.

                This past Tuesday, I handed in the longest paper I have yet to write in college: nine pages. I know that college requires papers much longer than that, but given that I’m taking mostly math and science courses, I don’t need to write very much. The paper was for my management class and it was actually a group project. As you may know from previous entries, the project was a service learning project in which my group had a raffle for the Clark University Thrift Store.  I worked with four other students who each wrote a section of the paper and I wrote the summary at the beginning and edited the rest of the paper. In case you didn’t know, I was editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper, so editing is one of my strengths.

                This paper was by no stretch of the imagination easy to edit. Our group members were randomly selected and each of us had a very different writing style and vocabulary. My job was to not only ensure the content was consistent, but I had to delete all redundancies and create a flow to make the essay appear as it was written by one person. This took several hours of reading and rereading, but my group and I are pleased with the result.

                I can definitely see the benefits of working in a group for a paper. We were able to discuss what elements should go in each section of the paper and combine our capabilities to creating the best overall quality. I didn’t mention that throughout the writing process, we exchanged sections with other group members to ensure we were on track. This definitely made my job as the editor a bit easier. However, I am one who would rather write papers on my own. It was a learning process to figure out the best way to effectively and efficiently work with and set deadlines for other writers. I have never been so happy when everyone in the group had their sections done on our set date. After two years of being in charge of a high school newspaper with no one meeting deadlines, having work in on time is so great.

                While writing papers independently can help you grow as a writer, compiling and formatting a paper from multiple writers can help even more. Looking at other writing styles, I was able to notice patterns in what writing is more effective and I incorporated those patterns throughout the paper.

                Our next group project for management involves an online simulation of what it’s like for a computer-selling company to make profits. I don’t know too much about it yet, but it seems really interesting, so you’ll definitely hear more about it. Have a great Halloween!

Strawberries, E. Coli, and Paper Airplanes

                In my last blog I talked a bit about biology and how we’re switching from learning about evolutionary biology to learning about a molecular level of biology. I’ll admit I wasn’t thrilled to learn about the processes of meiosis and mitosis – the processes of cell duplication. Memorization really isn’t my style, but I figured I was going to have to take a deep breath and dive into the magical world of complex definitions. As expected, there are lots of those which I will have to learn, but what I wanted to talk about here is the lab I did this past Monday.

Extracted DNA from one strawberry

                The lab had two major components. The first was isolating DNA from strawberries – so cool! What we did was add a lysis buffer (consisting of detergent, salt, and water) to a single mashed up strawberry and then we add ethanol alcohol to the mix. Most natural things will break down in alcohol, but not DNA. This allowed us to twirl the DNA onto a glass rod. The really cool picture on the right side of this blog is all of the DNA in a single, average-sized strawberry. Cool, right?

                The second portion of the lab, we grew our own E. coli using different amounts of plasmids – a small, circular DNA molecule which is separate from the bacteria’s DNA. I’ll be honest; this is not the easiest topic to explain. I really encourage you check out my friend Dylan’s blog. He’s a senior here at Clark University who has been making video blogs about his own research with growing bacteria. His work isn’t the same as what we did in lab, but it’s pretty similar. There’s a link on the right side of this blog to his video blog, but I’ll put in the link again for you right here. http://www.biowithdylan.blogspot.com - You’re welcome.

                Stepping away from biology, I wanted to talk a little bit about what I did in management class on Friday. We actually spent a majority of the class period making paper airplanes – and yes, it was for an educational purpose. I got to make paper airplanes in college. Are you jealous? Anyway, the class was split into three different groups. The groups were assembly line, cellular manufacturing, and quality circle. These are all types of manufacturing. To review, assembly lines are when one person performs one specific task and passes it down to the next person to perform their specific task and so on until the product is complete – in this case, each person did a specific fold in the airplane. Cellular manufacturing is when there are several individuals who each make the product from start to finish. I was in that group. I made my own planes myself! Last is quality circle in which the group organizes themselves in smaller groups to make the best products they can. The only requirement of them was to not be an assembly line or cellular manufacturer. Each group had a manager and would bring groups of ten planes to be tested. Wow – that was a lot of explaining. Let’s get to the cool part.

                We learned based on the different types of manufacturing that while some are more time-efficient, sometimes the quality is sacrificed. This plays into the trade-offs of what kind of manufacturing is best for each company. It is understandable that assembly line manufacturing is faster, but not necessarily the best in terms of quality. If there’s one person who is particularly bad at folding airplanes, each plane will have the same fault. Cellular manufacturing depends entirely on each worker. As you can imagine, my airplanes were flawless. Just kidding. Quality circle, as given by the name, are very good quality, but is more time consuming because they take the time to figure out the best methods and implement them to create the best possible airplane.

                I guess if there was a way to tie strawberry DNA, E. coli, and paper airplanes together, it would be to say that you never know what to expect in college.  In my management syllabus, it said, “In Class: Airplane Manufacture.” I had no idea what that meant, but I figured we would just be taking notes off the board. I can never tell when one of my classes is going to surprise me – hence, surprise…

Where have I seen this before?

From Biology 101

From Discovering Environmental Science

                Due to Columbus Day weekend and my spaced-out class schedule, by the end of Wednesday, I had only taken one class to reflect on. That’s biology. We had our second lecture run by Dr. Swenton about molecular biology. A lot of the material seemed vaguely familiar. I’ve taken biology before in my sophomore year of high school, but that actually wasn’t where the familiarity came from.
                After class, I went back to my dorm to work on an environmental science assignment. I opened my textbook and there was a diagram very similar to the one I saw in biology lecture. Environmental science is comprised of several different sciences – really, any science you want. It involves biology, chemistry, physics… The list goes on and on. The diagrams that looked similar, however, were actually from the chemistry review section of my environmental science book.
                It was interesting looking at the similar diagram from different class perspectives. In biology, we’re approaching this as more of an introduction to the structure of amino acids – which are parts of proteins. In the chemistry portion of environmental science, we are looking more closely at the charges and types of bonds involved between atoms.

                If you take a look at the two diagrams, you’ll see they are similar in appearance. However, the one on the bottom is two isomers of DDT. The scientific name for DDT is dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane – try saying that five times fast. You can imagine all the ways to study DDT in the environment – how it affects animals, water, etc. The diagram for biology, on the other hand, is a diagram of estradiol – better known as estrogen, the female hormone. That particular diagram was used to show us the structural differences between estrogen and testosterone, the male hormone.

                The two classes are starting to enhance each other because they are not on the same topic, but they work with similar concepts. Learning the same concept in two different ways allows a more diversified understanding of the material because I can understand structures from a biological and chemical perspective and think about how those slight alterations can affect the environment.

                Yes, it makes sense that science courses would be related, but just how related they are surprised me. Previous to this unit, biology focused on evolutionary history and environmental science worked with thermodynamics. How could these two things be more different? This concept won’t extend to all classes, but I like seeing how they can relate. What kinds of calculus could be related in management? Perhaps a financial application… Who knows until you get there?

Get the Professors YOU Want

                Before writing this entry, I spent a little bit of time thinking about what cool things were going on in my classes, but then I thought, what do students immediately think are cool and what things really are? What I mean is, if someone were to ask me something cool I wish my biology class did, I would probably think of something along the lines of a field trip to a special ecosystem or bringing a live animal into class to study. These things can happen, of course, but not as frequently as one might want. So what is there that’s actually interesting? Instead of thinking about what topics were studied in biology, I started thinking about the structure of the class.

                Biology 101 is a lecture class consisting of approximately 190 students. It would be very easy to fall into a routine and make that class extremely boring. What the biology department decided to do was have two lecturers who switch off at a given time during the year. Just this Monday, I had my last lecture with one professor and will get to see what the other is like this Friday. However, biology also meets of Wednesday. On that day, we had a guest lecturer come in from the biology department and tell us about animal behavior.

                For me, this was huge because I am so fascinated by animal behavior. The class isn’t situated about learning it, but the department obviously valued us getting at least a glimpse into what the topic was all about. That’s one thing I’m very appreciative about college. There are so many opportunities to learn things that you never planned on or even considered learning.

                One of the bigger problems for me and my friends in high school was teachers. If you got your schedule and happened to have the worst teacher in the school, there was nothing you could do about it. You’d dread that class every single day and your anger towards being stuck in that class would rise throughout the year. And then there are teachers who aren’t bad, but specialize in one particular subject who you seem to get again and again. My high school had five different Spanish teachers, but I managed to get the same one for three consecutive years. I wanted a break.

                In college, there is a period of time in which you can add and drop classes. No one asks you why you changed classes and no paperwork needs to be signed. You’re in charge of what you take here. During the first week of classes, I went to calculus class and discovered that the professor teaching the class really didn’t teach in the best style for me. So, I went onto my computer, checked availability of classes and changed professors right away. When there are problems here, there’s at least one way to solve it.

                Going back to biology, there’s only one actual class, but the professors switch throughout the semester. There’s no feeling of being stuck with a teaching style you don’t like. For other classes, there are TAs (teaching assistants) who have different backgrounds of the course material. At college, resources expand far beyond the one person in front of the classroom. It’s really nice to be in a place that takes advantage of every opportunity to enrich learning.