Here's hoping.....

that my expectations won't be too dashed with the last minute change in my anatomy course. After all my excitement and anticipation I showed up to the first day of lecture this past wednesday, and there was Professor Diamond with her bright white hair, and her infamous floral patterned hatbox. As the lecture hall of some 700 plus VERY loud students settled down she calmly set the big hat box on the podium, opened it up, and pulled out a human brain. While the hall was still buzzing with all the students, she gave her opening lecture on the brain and its incredible capacity to comprehend and imagine despite weighing only 3lbs. The joy of her simple lecture style was short lived however, and she announced that for the FIRST time in 50 years she is NOT teaching the class! Because of torn rotator cuff muscles she cannot write on her big blackboards and will be taking the semester off. (okay, she IS at least 83 years old, I guess she's entitled to take a break). soooo she is handing the class off to the summer session teacher, a very good professor but very different.

Goodbye chalkboards, hello power point--slides that are read over so fast there is no time to write them down and barely enough time to comprehend. We are expected to go back and learn the material and read it on our own time (a very different approach compared to the IN class learning Diamond encouraged). Sure we are asked questions and given about 2.5 seconds to answer before boom! the next slide is up and we are off and moving into new material. I sat through nearly an entire semester of Diamond's anatomy class last fall and the differences are striking (I was not able to ACTUALLY enroll because Berkeley is freakishly impacted, and was perpetually on the waitlist).

Instead of condensing the information into accessible concepts and principles we are given the worlds supply of information and left to pick up all the pieces to make it understandable. Diamond would have the class repeat difficult words, encourage drawing the structures to understand them, and overall ENGAGE each and every student in the 700 person lecture hall so the class never seemed too big. And every Wednesday she would pick four students at random to have lunch with at the faculty club. Learning was about talking, sharing, questioning, and drawing. Sadly, a very different semester lies ahead, one where the learning occurs at home or in the library hunched over a fat textbook instead of in the classroom. Where participation is charted through electronic i-clickers (remote control answering device things) and notetaking and drawing are practically discouraged (since all the slides are available online allowing us to simply listen to lecture). Although I'm really happy that I got the chance to audit Diamond's lectures, it's too ironic that when I finally get the chance to take the class, it's no longer the same. Ahh c'est la vie!

At the very least I'll attempt to be extra dedicated to drawing and journaling and once lab starts next week I'll hopefully have some cool pics to post! I'm pretty sure it will all be skeletal but its exciting nonetheless.

ciao for now!
here's hoping....