I'm an extraordinary teacher. Most of my students like me. This is not to toot my own horn, but rather because I come at teaching with a different perspective. Although typically called life science, biology is really the Science of and for Life. Last night I told my students that Chemistry is the rules, Physics is the mechanism, and Biology is the practical application and results when the rules are applied or ignored. Too many students step into the classroom and think it's about plants, animals, photosynthesis, the plasma membrane and DNA transcription, but it's about critical thinking skills and how to use what you know to find the truth.
Some of the students don't like me now. That's ok. I'm not there for an ego boost. I don't have an ego to bruise. I know who I am and what I know, and what they think about me doesn't change who I am. Truth is not offended if you happen to believe falsehood. Whatever you believe, the truth remains. Unlike some other people, I don't get excited and feel like I'm 'doing my job' if a certain percentage of students fail each semester. I am there to teach them how to use what they know.
Unlike other professors, I empathize with them. I am young enough (the next oldest professor until recently was 12 years my senior, but now we have two who are within five years of my age) that I can remember and understand what it was like to be in their position. Too many of my professors wanted me to read their minds, and I am learning that it's a natural but counterproductive mentality among the faculty. Most of the students know I am not trying to lord over them, that I will admit mistakes and slips of the tongue without being caught, look things up I don't know or about which I'm not sure, and ultimately confess that I'm human. I am real to them, and they know they are real to me. I am the kind who will sit down after class and go over material, even if it's for other classes, or explain my lectures in a different way, even if I have to compare the Kreb's Cycle to an internal combustion engine.
Until they enter my classroom, most of them have been misled to believe that the purpose of class is to make them able to barf information back up on an exam. To this end, we have a series of PhD professors who believe it is their duty to essentially haze anyone who hopes to be like them. They put students through a series of tests that beat people down rather than realize that they are there to help students achieve their goals. After all, the students PAY us to help them get to that end by giving them information they need and the practice applying it. Too often we teach our students to answer questions rather than solve problems, and that serves neither them nor us, unless of course you're only after an ego boost.
The students are generally smart people who lack only guidance on how to use their wit, wisdom, and intellect. Many of them are young enough that they haven't started to figure things out yet, and part of our job is to culture them, not just the bacteria with which we work! For my part, most of my students are headed into life science careers, where they will directly affect the duration of life, the quality of life, or hopefully both simultaneously for their customers (to whom we usually refer as patients). Much of the course material is stuff they already know, but we teach it in a way to make us sound smarter than they are. Just as they don't understand the difference between the Fluid Mosaic Model and the Second Law of Thermodynamics as our customers, neither will most of their customers. These students go into a uniquely difficult position where they will interface between doctors, who all talk to each other like high falutin' greeks, and the patients, who may know absolutely nothing about biology.
I know my limits. I sometimes recommend students get a tutor, not because they're unintelligent, but because tutors approach the subject material differently than I, and maybe they can connect. I believe students should avail themselves of all the tools available to reach their goals. Some teachers hold themselves above the students and are as a consequence inaccessable. Too many of the people who have PhDs have been out of school so long that if they had to go back and take the PhD exam they would fail it. They have been out of school so long that they just repeat many of their notes, and they're not staying current. There are exceptions, but we should be the rule. Contrarily, I'm near enough to the students to empathize and give them appropriate correction and direction.
Biology is also the search for truth. Unfortunately, most people can't handle truth, but truth shows compassion. People keep telling me that friends tell them what they need to hear and not what they want to hear. Giving the truth sometimes takes courage. I learned the courage to give truth when I was married. My ex wife would seek my 'opinion' when she really wanted me to certify what she wanted. This she did, I believe, even though it may be subconsciously, so that she could hang it on me if it failed or turned out to be something she didn't like. If I disagreed up front, I was getting in her way. It was a way for her to pass the buck and a no-win scenario for me. Eventually I decided that if I was going to be damned anyway, I would be damned for who I really was.
Since then, I have had myriad opportunities to stand up for truth at the cost of things that were once very dear to me. I have subsequently learned that my integrity is all they cannot take from me, and I have nothing to lose of which I would lament being rid.
You learn what you really believe when people challenge your assertions. If you seek consensus, like in the global warming scam, you're looking for affirmation and confirmation, to know that YOU are right, not what is right. You are not looking for truth. There is the famous exchange from some old Tom Cruise movie I haven't actually seen:
You want answers?I want the truth.You can't handle the truth.
When you are faced with a no win scenario, that you will be the only one who stands up for something, you find what you truly believe. You discover who you truly are by swimming against the tides of opposition. Only then will you know to what lengths you are willing to go to defend and support the things for which you ostensibly fight.
Science teaches us to think critically in the search for truth. It teaches us to tilt at windmills when they blow an ill wind. The pursuit of actual truth is somewhere where even sometimes the brave dare not go. Sometimes the pursuit of truth means you may get unhorsed, but in the end, it is he who acts with integrity of heart who wins a place in our hearts and history books. Biology teaches us what we need to know in life and how to use it to become something. Not all biologists understand that or pass on that message to their students, when it is absolutely critical to their education. Only those people who understand the science of and for life really live.
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