Professor Stinson

I usually write blog when I work in the Media Center. The main duty of my job is taking care of students who coming to borrow laptops, videos, or asking anything about the center. I don’t have to work all the time, if nobody comes, I can read my books or use the computer. However, I rarely have large pieces of free time during work. People come unexpectedly, maybe every a few minutes, or maybe continuously. It is annoy that being interrupted. So, I prefer do something relax to using that time to study.

I will have three exams two week later, expect Sukhu’s class. I wish he gives us the mid-exam a little bit late, so I can avoid having time shortage during mid-term exams season.

Professor Stinson of Anthropology 260 is a very very nice lady. She got her Ph. D on Biological Anthropology in 1970s. She organizes the class very well. She often gives examples after some abstract theories to help us to understand. I love examples; it is easy to be confused by fancy definitions in science, but examples make you believe that everything has to make sense. One day, to illustrate the translation of portion, professor Stinson asked students pretending to be different DNA and RNA strands and moved around in the middle of the classroom as RNA strands travel from the nucleus into the cytoplasm. It was so funny and different to be forgotten.

She assigns relatively short reading, leaving enough time that students can go back to reread in order to get completely understanding. Can you image if every week you have to read a hundred or two hundred pages that you still have time to take care of the old text. She also gives us assignment every two weeks, which contains the questions related to the exams. If you can do these assignments, you will do well on the exam. If you fell difficulty on the assignments, there is still time that you can work on it.

She always encourages us to ask questions both in and outside class. I went to see her during her office hours because she said several times that she was waiting students coming during her office hours. She explained my questions patiently despite my bad pronunciation and my ignorance on the field of biology.

I have little biological background, and I have totally no idea that how allele, DNA, chromosome are in the beginning of this class. Also, there are a lot of extremely long and stranger terms that we have to deal with; I feel I just cannot pronounce them correctly. This course is not an introduction course, but an advanced 200 level course. I suppose that a student in this class should not be on such a low level as me. Despite those disadvantages, I actively study. I study class notes and the textbook, visiting professor, conducting the Internet. Professors often dislike student looking up Wikipedia for academic research. However, I think Wiki is very useful to get some general information.

There are many middle age female professors in my college whom I admire. They work hardly and carefully, respect students and patiently. I think they are one of the most useful powers in our society.