Connecting My Coursework With My research and Vice Versa. What's Wrong With That?
One of the greatest experiences that I had at UW was being able to do research on a topic that I am quite fond of, but something even better is pairing that research with a course that is taught by the head of your lab. This was the case for me last quarter and was a profound way to get to know the work I was doing better as well as form a stronger relationship with my supervisor/professor.
I was quite fortunate in a number of ways to be able to take biology 447 or as its colloquially known, Greening of the Earth. For starters the course is only offered periodically and the last time it was available was 4 years ago before I would have even been at UW. In fact my TA said that he took the class when it was last offered and he is in his fifth year of his PhD, it also just so happens that my TA is my lab advisor as well which brings me to the second reason why this class was so special. Since winter quarter my junior year I have worked in the Strömberg lab which is named for Caroline Strömberg who is a world class paleobotanist and also the professor of biology 447. As such when I saw that the course was being taught winter 2023 I was chomping at the bit to take it and was not disappointed in the slightest.
While I work in the lab with paleobotanists, I would not consider myself one as I have not had a great deal of training in the nitty gritty elements of the plant anatomy aspect, but this class allowed me to gain far more insight on the complexity of the fossil record of plants over the history of the earth. This provided me a stronger base in order to conduct my work in the lab as well as to bring information I had learned from the lab into the classroom. Pardon the pun, but I felt that this cross pollination facilitated my learning in a way that I had not experienced prior and allowed me to expand my horizons in the way that I have come to expect of the honors program but was pleasantly surprised by in a standard course.
The document I have to commemorate this course is my final paper which delves into the effects that the bolide that ended the reign of the dinosaurs had on land plants. This was a dream come true as mass extinction events fascinate me greatly and plants often get overlooked for their animal counterparts so I thought it only right to see the impact that this event had on the plants of the time. I did rather well on the paper, but more importantly I found that it was a good synthesis of the coursework as it combined the topics of using the geologic record, the physiology of plants, as well as the skill of reading research papers which can be rather difficult to parse through at times.
"Life is very short and there is no time for fussing and fighting my friend... try to see it my way only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong."