The Biology of Belief - Bruce H. Lipton [12]
When I looked up at the class, I was greeted with frozen, shell-shocked faces. The “strivers” found themselves behind the big eight ball. With more than half a semester behind them, they had to start the course all over again. A dark gloom overcame the students, most of whom were already treading water in their other, very demanding medical school courses. Within moments, their gloom had turned into quiet despair. In profound silence, I looked out over the students and they looked back at me. I experienced an internal ache—the class collectively resembled one of those Greenpeace pictures of wide-eyed baby seals just before heartless fur traders club them to death.
My heart welled. Perhaps the salt air and sweet scents had already made me more magnanimous. In any case, unexpectedly, I found myself announcing that I would make it my personal commitment to see that every student was fully prepared for the final exam, if they would commit to providing matching efforts. When they realized I was truly committed to their success, I could see the lights flash on in their previously panicked eyes.
Feeling like an embattled coach revving up the team for the Big Game, I told them I thought they were every bit as intelligent as the students I taught in the States. I told them I believed their State-side peers were simply more proficient at rote memorization, the quality that enabled them to score better in the medical college admissions tests. I also tried very hard to convince them that histology and cell biology are not intellectually difficult courses. I explained that in all of its elegance, nature employs very simple operating principles. Rather than just memorizing facts and figures, I promised they were going to gain an understanding of cells because I would present simple principles on top of simple principles. I offered to provide additional night lectures, which would tax their stamina after their already long lecture- and lab-packed days. The students were pumped up after my ten-minute pep talk. When the period ended, they bolted from that classroom snorting fire, determined they would not be beaten by the system.
After the students left, the enormity of the commitment I had made sank in. I started having doubts. I knew that a significant number of the students were truly unqualified to be attending medical school. Many others were capable students whose backgrounds had not prepared them for the challenge. I was afraid that my island idyll would degenerate into a frenetic, time-consuming academic scrimmage that would end in failure for my students and for me as their teacher. I started thinking about my job at Wisconsin, and suddenly it was beginning to look easy. At Wisconsin, I gave only eight lectures out of the approximately fifty that made up the histology/cell biology course. There were five members of the anatomy department who shared the lecturing load. Of course I was responsible for the material in all of the lectures because I was involved in their accompanying laboratory sessions. I was supposed to be available to answer all course-related questions asked by the students. But knowing the material and presenting lectures on the material are not the same thing!
I had a three-day weekend to wrestle with the situation I had created for myself. Had I faced a crisis such as this back home, my type A personality would have had me swinging from the proverbial chandeliers. Interestingly, as I sat by the pool, watching the sun set into the Caribbean, the potential angst simply morphed into an exciting adventure. I began to get excited about the fact that for the first time in my teaching career, I was solely responsible for this major course and free from having to conform to the style and content restrictions of team-taught programs.
Cells as Miniature Humans
As it turned out, that histology course was the most exhilarating and intellectually profound period of my academic career.