In theory, this should be my last week in Miami, but I have a make up class my students are waiting on. The short story is that the teacher before me started one of my courses (we'll call it the Allen class) with lecture #4, not lecture #1 (cardinal numbers are so hard), and did a very poor job with it. So my whole course has been one lecture behind ever since I started. My supervisors, while not thrilled, understand the problem and are doing their best to find a time to stuff in that last class. It was originally going to be next week, on Monday or Tuesday, but everything's in the air now because of the hurricane.
I like having my courses winding down, but I miss my engaged, intuitive, Institutional students. It seems like I only ever get two different student types: questions-I-can't-answer, and note-gazers.
The Allen class is the former. It was highly apparent in today's lecture.
"So after the myosin head has let go of the actin filament, it hydrolyzes ATP, reconfigures to its high energy conformation, and..."
A hand shoots up.
"Yes?"
"What causes muscle twitches? Like spasms when your eye twitches."
Oy.
I get these students. I used to be one of them, particularly in physiology and neuro. My professors didn't know me by name or face, they knew me by hand.
"Is that what causes comas? Why is the limbic system not a true lobe? How does the planning of the cerebrocerebellum relate to the planning of the frontal lobe?"
I make Hermione proud.
It was how my classmates knew me too.
"You're the one who sits on the far side of Tamkun's class and asks all the really good questions, aren't you?"
It shocked me. Honestly, I always thought that if any of my classmates could get their hands on me they would duct tape my mouth shut.
I love it when they ask me questions I can't answer. It shows they're engaged. I learn new things, I get to stay up late pouring over medical journals. I get to make up abysmal answers off the top of my head.
"Well, I'm not completely certain. Imbalances in ions could be one reason. There are some dopaminergic drugs that do unfortunate things to you regarding muscle movement. I'll look it up and come back to you with a better answer, okay?"
Student nods, scribbles something down on his notes, (Me: 1, Teacher: 0) and we resume the sliding filament theory.
I got questions on Tuberculosis (what exactly do you see in those radiographs?), what do medullary and medulla even mean, and the type of marrow in flat bones.* We were incredibly inquisitive today.
My second class, we'll call the Nova class, is full of note-gazers. It becomes highly apparent during practice question time when I'm trying to get an answer out of them.
"So given what we know about the nature of CO2, how would we expect to see it cross the blood-brain barrier in question 3?"
My students all carefully scan their workbooks, avoiding eye contact at all costs. I feel like Medusa. Somewhere a cricket quartet begins.
"How about A and B? Are those the correct definitions for facilitated and simple diffusion?"
Someone coughs. A page flips. One of the crickets breaks an A string.
"And what about C? Do we need to actively transport CO2 into the CSF?"
One lone soul slowly shakes her head.
"Exactly! Remember that blood gasses are hydrophobic, so they can diffuse right across the cell membrane."
I circle D on the board, and we drag ourselves onward.
For the life of me, I can't figure out what it is. Both classes are in the middle of the afternoon, which is never a good time for class, but one of them manages to pull itself through the post-lunch coma and call out a letter or two during passages. The other one seems intent on committing every word of their books to memory. If they did, I'd never know. They would never tell me.
Still, I'll miss both of them when next week rolls around and I'm on my last flight home. I don't think I've ever had quite the unique blend of backgrounds and nationalities in my classrooms before, and I'll miss the Creole, and stumbling over names that have too many vowels in them. Who knows, I may even miss riding out hurricanes.
Probably not.
*For those of you playing at home: I still haven't looked it up, middle from the Latin media, and red bone marrow, not yellow.
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