Author: Robert Soffer

Coming into this IDC I was expecting a boring and dull class and curriculum. Many people I spoke to said that this IDC was one of their worst, so my standards were pretty low. However, after taking this class I can gladly say that it has been my favorite so far. Most of the things we covered were interesting and relevant and it was made enjoyable through fun activities like labs and 3D printing.

I really liked the poster presentations, steam festival and the 3d printing. I thing this part was my favorite part of the class. The 3d printing was something novel and intriguing that I may never be able to experience again. However, I do think we presented our posters in class way too many times. By the time we finished I was able to present every other groups poster. I felt as we wasted time presenting too many times. Sure it obviously helped when presenting at the festival but we could have prepared more on our own time. I do like that we were definitely the most prepared and well-presented groups at the festival. People were constantly amazed at how professional our poster looked, how well we presented and how cool our 3d printed objects were. The time consuming work definitely ended up paying off. I also liked the in class presentations we had to do on the plants and drugs. I felt as those taught us interesting and cool new information regarding scientific stuff. Presenting also helped improve our communication and public speaking skills which was also a plus.

One thing I disliked was Bioblitz. The concept seems cool, getting hands on experience and everything. But I feel as it was a mess, wasn’t relevant and didn’t really teach us anything. We just had a mush of data of organisms. I felt as it was very random to the coursework and it could have easily been avoided. Another thing that was a little confusing was the eportfolio website. There were so many assignments, things to complete and due dates that everything became confusing. I had to constantly check the syllabus and texts others to find out what we had to do. I felt it could have been more simplified.

Overall, I really did like this course and would recommend it to other students. The classes were captivating and the course was well structured.

Thank you Professor Greer and thank you Jake.

In high school I was never a big fan of labs. Currently I am still not a big fan of labs. Yes, I agree they are important but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. The purpose of doing labs are important because you get a hands on experience of what you are learning in class. It helps you get a better understanding of the material. But most times I find the labs a little routine and heavily controlled. If done correctly, we know the outcome and know everyone will have the same outcome. There’s no room for mystery or innovation. You know what you will put in and what you will get. However, I do realize that by controlling the experiment you are zoning in on the desired results so students can get a better understanding of what they did. I believe that a class like ours doesn’t really need a lab. We are not specializing in anything and the lab is just a fun learning experience for us. I at least hope to enjoy the lab as well as to walk away with the understanding of what I did. I want it to be interesting and intriguing. In different classes, like history, a lab can be any hands on experience with the material. It can be a play or act out of certain wars or events. This would engage the students, make them enjoy the subject and help them remember it better. The language of labs has to be very clear and specific so that if someone were to read it they can recreate and understand your lab done. There should be no vagueness or confusion. When writing a ab report you should be straightforward and clear.

So I was reading the article and I was delightfully surprised to see it was about abortion, contraception and the drugs associated with it. The topic of abortion always interested me and frustrated me at the same time. To keep from causing any political insults I will keep my opinion on the matter disclosed. However, what I thought was pretty crazy was that I was watching a tv show right before reading this article. In the show a teenage girl got pregnant and the topic of abortion came up. The girl opted to have an abortion but by the time she went to the clinic the baby was too far along to be legally allowed to abort. So back to the article. I was wondering if this new drug would be able to help in a scenario like this. Per say if a woman was too far along would this technique and drug be allowed to abort the baby or is it still considered illegal. The article didn’t address a scenario like that where a woman was pregnant for a while.

Also in class we spoke a lot about molecular structures and drawings. After reading this article, in my opinion, the molecular structure pictures provide in the article were unnecessary. They didn’t help me understand or visualize the article better. I felt as if they were just there. Like cool that’s what it looks like but it doesn’t help. I would have understood the article the same with or without the structures. Another thing is that the article didn’t really provide a conclusion. They kind of hopped around the idea of the potential of this drug but didn’t come to an exact and concrete conclusion.

But anyways I usually dislike science articles and the like as they confuse me. But this on the other hand was an interesting article on an interesting topic. The only thing is this article was written in 1971 so I don’t know about any of the updates they had in this study. If the article was written today there probably would have been different results and studies. I’m going to look into it a little further.