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.