This week in Intro Zoo our lab was about Mollusks and Evolution. We used mollusks as an example of adaptive radiation. Usually these lectures are pretty boring, especially since I did not write the lectures. It isn't that the lectures are poorly written, but writing lectures for multiple teachers isn't really a "one size fits all" thing. I will often find myself jumping ahead or skipping slides to come back to them later. This reordering sometimes presents the ideas with a better flow.
There wasn't much reorganizing this week, as the main topic of lecture was natural selection. I believe I lectured for an average of 30 minutes too long in each of my sections. This is one of the few lectures that directly pertains to my interests as a scientist. The best part is that MOST of my students weren't asleep at the end! Not only were the students interested, but I didn't hate the world at the end of my 3rd section this week (which is a first).
I could hold out hope that this will become a trend, but I don't think I should. I'm sure there will be other weeks which are nearly as interesting, but not many. Ecology is where I hang my hat, and for 3 hours this week I got to talk about niches, what they are, and how they fit into the grand scheme of evolution. Natural selection and its driving mechanisms are so elegant and simple. I want to teach at the end of all this education and there is one reason for that; I enjoy helping others understand ideas and concepts that I find interesting.
"In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. "
Charles Darwin
No comments:
Post a Comment