If I had it over to do again, I would make one change to my educational pursuits. I attended a small state university void of the normal accolades and splendid faculty but with appropriately cheaper tuition than more prestigious institutions. I liked my program, my major, most of my teachers, and my life. I like what I know. What I know isn't however reflected in my grades. I know things that my transcript doesn't say I do. What would I change? I'd care less about my transcript.
The practical matter of graduate school is that most people will receive a B. I mentioned in a previous post an undergraduate organic chemistry course where our instructor, who had once taught chemistry at Harvard, gave one person an A, one person an F, and most people a C. In graduate school, a C is basically a failing grade, and so there were professors who would give one person an A, one person a C, and the rest a score of B. If I had been smarter, I would have worked just hard enough on the course to be better than the worst student. My B would have been enough and would have freed me to learn things I actually wanted to know.
I learned a lot of things in my life that don't appear unless you engage me in conversation. While I was on my mission, I learned to speak German as fluently as a foreigner can and picked up some Italian when I got ahold of "Italian For Missionaries" when I transferred to Innsbruck. Look at my transcripts, and you'll see one year of french and two years of german, but in high school. I have read Locke, Montesquie, von Mises, Hobbes, and all the works of Shakespeare since college. You would only know that to speak to me or look through those books in my personal library because I have never taken a course on literature, politics, or economics since college. Even in my own field, I still read things. I read Widtsoe's "Dry Farming" which is the theorem on which irrigation is predicated. I know about the fungus that makes ants commit suicide and the baumanii infestation coming over from wounded soldiers. I listened to NPR talk about "volunteer weeds" invading the normal population after we genetically modify them. I also know that your banana is radioactive and that the FDA is perfectly ok with that. I know about the difference between elemental and colloidal mercury, which is why I'm not afraid of old vaccines. I also don't like vaccines much, because I know that in order to elicit an immune response against most viruses, you have to actually inject a live virus or couple its antigens to something else, which is why some folks catch the flu from their shot.
What you really know is not reflected in your grades. I have been teaching long enough to know that grades only really represent how much information our students were able to barf back up for the exam. Students complain because we don't test their knowledge when we actually do. I'm not interested in what facts you know; I want to know if you can use them. One of my favorite teachers as an undergraduate for our final presented us with a question like this:
If I mutate the amino acids at 171 from TYR to ALA and 242 from ARG to PRO, how will that affect the structure and function of this tyrosine protein kinase in the tissues where it's active?
That was our entire exam. Seriously. Nobody picked "C".
I did very well because of what I actually know. I continue to do well because of what I know. When it became possible that I might get cut, several senior scientists at the college volunteered to go to bat for me because they knew they could count on me. When I helped one of my father's subordinates move and a few of his senior supervisors decided to test me about a subject for which I was actually passionate, I gave them a broadside. I will be able to go somewhere and do something else because of things I actually know, even though they are not on my transcript or clearly evident from my curriculum vitae (resume).
What you know is what matters. It's all you really take with you in the end of every phase of life. The transcripts and diplomas matter to some, but I am esteemed, respected, and valued by people much more successful than I in spite of my lack of prestigious credentials. They are more interested in what I am and why. I am someone you can really know.
No comments:
Post a Comment