General Comments for Bi 341

Students in this class exhibit a great deal of variation regarding interests, abilities, motivation, and time available for study. A single course can not meet all of your needs, so we compromise. As noted in the syllabus, I am especially concerned about those have difficulty with genetics and those who understand quickly and find the material too elementary.

Genetics is a difficult area of study. You must keep up to date with your studies. There are usually several students each term who begin to study in ernest late in the term. This is dangerous. Even with a good tutor it is difficult to make up lost study time.

At the end of the term some students are dissatisfied with their grades. I can accept some of the blame for this but most of it likely lies with the student.

One of my functions in the course is to guide you through some of the difficult areas of genetics.

My expectations of you are that you will:

attend lectures

attend recitation sections

organize your studies so that you can ask questions during recitation

read and understand the syllabus.

read and study the appropriate sections of the textbook and workbook

make use of the internet to ask questions by e-mail and to access materials from the World Wide Web

An excellent book dealing with study techniques and the philosophy of learning is:

J. Ira Klusky; Easy A's: winning the school game

A copy is available on reserve in the library; I have a loaner copy. This book, now out of print, was brought to my attention by Dr. Lutz of our chemistry department.