Maggie's Farm

I took Chemistry from a Nobel winner chemist in a classroom of 250 eager students, many of them hopeful pre-meds. He clearly had been assigned to one undergrad class, but he didn't seem to resent it.

He had fun talking to a class of undergrads, but he talked about whatever he wanted to, whatever was on his mind. He liked to talk about how the planet was running out of oil so there would be no substrate left for medicines and organic chemicals. He said everything you need to know is in the textbook and, if you are confused, try to grab a TA.

Well, the impatient TAs had zero interest in that chore. As a result, many of us formed study groups which were great fun. I wanted to learn Chem so as not to be an ignorant person, and later took Organic for the same reason, despite being a History major. The Chem exams were a bitch. The five in my study group all got As, back before grade inflation. Science grades were curved. The reason our group did so well was partly because one of our study approaches was to create difficult problems for eachother. We'd meet at night in an empty classroom and do everything on the blackboard (remember them?).

Conflicted: Faculty and Online Education, 2012