Dear Ivy League
Connection,
It's the end of another
semester. This semester has been rather busy for me, but not much has changed
from the previous semester. I am still working at my research lab, the general
chemistry stockroom, and my parents' store. The only addition is that this
previous semester, I was promoted to the Curriculum Director of BEAM, a
student-run mentoring program I am a part of. I also shadowed a chemistry TA in
his lab section as a requirement to TA myself in the future during the school
year. Each semester has become increasingly busy since freshman year, but it
was a slow and steady buildup. I would encourage freshmen not to overload on
classes in their first semester/year. It's nice to be able to take a lighter
course load in order to explore other things you may be interested in.
I'll try to focus more
on BEAM this e-mail, as that's what's changed the most for me recently. BEAM
stands for Berkeley Engineers and Mentors, and we are a student-run
organization that sets up a weekly 1- to 1.5-hour science lesson at currently 8
different Berkeley/Oakland/Richmond elementary schools (most are in Berkeley),
1 middle school, and 1 high school. We basically go into schools with the
intention of getting students excited about science through demos and
experimentation instead of through textbooks and lectures. As curriculum
director, I am in charge of a committee of about 6 people, and we each write
1-2 lesson plans to be taught that semester at the different schools. What I
have to make sure happens is that each person gets his or her lesson plan
written by the deadline and that the concept is straightforward and easily
understood from the lesson plan, which means I need to try to imagine myself as
an elementary school kid and see if I would enjoy the activity. Writing
curriculum has really given me a greater appreciation for my teachers in high
school who always tried to come up with analogies and different ways of
explaining the same concept to try to reach out to as many students as possible.
Writing curriculum is harder than just writing a procedure for an experiment;
one must think about how the mentors
should present the concepts to the students, how should we relate the concepts
to the students? What kind of analogies, etc. I've really learned a lot about
how to teach in BEAM versus just tutoring students, and I'm glad I took the
time to look outside of activities related to school work to do something I
really enjoy. I know that many college students look for extracurriculars that
are related to and boost themselves up for what they plan to do post-undergrad,
but I urge you to look outside of the usual resume boosters and find something
that really interests you.
A little on the
specifics of courses, I take mainly chemistry upper division courses now. I
have to say that the chemistry I learn and use now is much different from what
I learned in high school. There's much less focus on memorization (which for
some reason always seems to be a focus in high school chem courses...) and a
lot of focus on trying to understand and develop an intuition for chemistry and
why reactions take place. Actually, chemistry is rather multifaceted... but it
is definitely not a lot of number-punching, which it seems like in high school.
So if you happen to like chemistry but can't seem to get past all the math,
don't let it get in your way. Chemistry, and lab work especially, is based more
on hard work and perseverance than it is on math skills.
Julie
Liang
Candidate
for B.S. in Chemistry, UC Berkeley
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