What We Learned This School Year 20/21: Covid Edition

A 2021 Still Life
April necessities

This was the school year when nearly all of us learned how to do a virtual class or meeting.  Not all of us learned to turn off our camera when eating or walking around during a zoom class/meeting.

Here are some selections from the broad swath of what our graduating senior, Younger Daughter, learned during her final year of college.  

What Our Graduating College Senior Learned

Class: Project Seminar 

This class was about archives.  The cadaver (physical body) - the ones used in medical school - can be thought of as an archive.  I learned that in this case, one must destroy data in order to use it and preserve it.

Class:  Lit and Science

I learned that anatomy textbooks used to be like pop-up books. And that before the 1800s the way people got cadavers was - if people were condemned to death and hung, hospitals were allowed to use the bodies.  

(Mom’s comment: She spent a lot of time thinking about cadavers.)

Class:  Molecular Biology

Really cool!  I learned about viral recombination and the viral reproductive system.  I learned that people are using bacterial DNA to form computer circuits to store data that can then be transformed back into movies, books, and other information.

(Mom’s comment: SAY WHAT?! DNA is used to store movies?!)

Class:  Cell Biology

I learned that it is apparently difficult for many people to give an engaging 15-minute presentation.  Most people don’t know how long 15 minutes is.  I learned about autophagy:  your body is supposed to chew up mitochondria, get rid of them, and remake them later.  However, as you get older, your body gets worse at doing this.

Class: Cell Biology Laboratory 

I learned that professors like to use undergraduates as free labor to do their lab work.

Class: Undergraduate Teaching Experience

(i.e. being an Organic Chemistry Teaching Assistant)

I learned how to put together a slide presentation. I learned that however interesting you make a presentation, no one will show up (neither in person nor online).

Class:  Biology Writing Class

I learned how to write scientifically, which was more fun than I thought it would be.  I learned how to summarize while still keeping an interesting tone and maintaining a low emotional level.

Class: Language of Medicine

I learned about Foucault - his theory on the evolution of medicine from the French Revolution until now.  I learned that I don’t want to read Foucault any more.

Class: Cellular and Developmental Biology Seminar

I learned that I was losing focus by this point.  It was very hard to do this class by zoom. 

Class:  Developmental Biology

I learned about the Hox genes - they determine where your arms go and where your legs go, so they don’t get mixed up.  The Hox genes work in a cascade fashion.

I learned that a sea urchin turns its body inside out when gastrulation is finished (except “inside out” is not exactly it). Gastrulation is the formation of the layers of the body  - the endoderm, the ectoderm and the mesoderm.

I learned that there is a primitive streak in the chick. 

(Mom’s comment:  I have no idea what any of this means.)

Class:  Developmental Biology Laboratory

I learned that I hate working with flies so much!  They look cute under the microscope, but they are so annoying!  You have to put them to sleep, but there are always some who will not go to sleep (and more complaining about flies).  And fly embryos are even more annoying.  I also learned that I was the only one in the class who kept a proper lab notebook.

(Mom’s comment:  Only a biology major would think flies look cute.)

Class:  Life

I learned that I enjoy having people over for tea.  I learned how to bake.  I learned that moving is an incredible hassle that I never want to do again.

(Mom’s comment:  She said that before the move had actually taken place.  It’s done now.  But she certainly will have to move again at some point.)

What the Common Household Mom Learned

I learned to be so very grateful for my mother’s life and wisdom at the same time as I miss her greatly.  I learned that grief has no timeline, and that each of us grieves differently.  

I learned that democracy is fragile and far more dependent on norms than we expect it to be.  That is a lesson of the past few years, not just this school year.

I learned that 39 candidates for one office is too many candidates to reasonably keep track of (actually it was for 9 seats of the same judicial office but no matter how many seats, 39 is too many). 

A distanced graduation.  But at least
they got to graduate in person.

 

It can snow in April - but we already knew this.