A Curious Girl: X-Men of the Immune System

*sigh*. I got asked if I'd bought my ticket for the march for free education. "No," I replied. But then where is the excuse not to buy one? My very pathetic faking that I had no change probably did not go unnoticed.

So why don't I want one? Because it's a waste of time, not to mention I'm not even sure I agree with it. I mean, I agree with free education in principle, lately I've become very fed up with people complaining about 'student poverty'. I've never met an impoverished student unless you call only being able to go out once a week impoverished.

On one hand, I do think some taxation money should go towards university education. It's in everyone's interests that there are doctors and teachers and so on. And perhaps a bigger student loan could help.

Hmm. We had a lecture this afternoon that I hardly listened to. From the conversation afterwards, I don't think anyone else did either. The lecturer had Powerpoint slides identical to the handouts, and what's more, she practically read them out. Sitting there in a stupor brought on by a cold and not getting enough sleep as usual, there was nothing to persuade me to listen. Doodles (and in one case, maths equations) abounded throughout the lecture hall - I think Sarah (my housemate) was the only one I could see writing (unless she was doodling too) - from what I observed, everyone had pretty much given up trying to pay attention. I drew a 'scholarly owl' (a doodle I made up in psychology about three years ago, remind me to show you sometime) and wondered what was next in my 'Holly' saga of stories. Intermittently, I thought about Matthew. I'm a bit concerned for him at the moment.

Strangely enough, I did learn something that lecture. There's a fascinating difference between written media and spoken media. There's a strong necessity for handouts to be incomplete, not include every item of data, otherwise you don't want to bother. Part of learning has to be about engaging, getting knowledge and moulding it into your own interpretation. As a teacher (whose assemblies I actually remember - talented man :) ) once said, you haven't understood something until you've put it into your own words. As James quoted to me this morning, "Lectures are a process of transferring the lecturer's notes to the students' notes, without passing through the brains of either." *chuckle*

And reformatting a chapter in a textbook to Powerpoint is not worthwhile. The whole point of a lecture is to hear from an expert in the field how they see it, not to read/hear regurgiated Lodish et al. I have a copy of Lodish et al.'s textbook at home, I can quite easily read the chapters myself, thank you very much.

The last lecture today was all right. Ion exchange chromatography... oh the joys. The lecturer, Dr. K, mentioned how proteins bind to the matrix, so I scribbled next to the diagram 'the matrix has you' (daft doodles like that help me to remember it, it's a learning technique!). Then I noticed that someone had written 'THE MATRIX HAS YOU' on the desk. A coincidence? Now I'm worried...

I went to Matthew's yesterday. He showed me the computer game from which the phrase 'All your base are belong to us' comes from... And a daft anime he'd somehow gotten hold of, DiGi Charat. I enjoyed it. Very amusing and quite surreal.

Did you know... the DNA that codes for antibodies (which fight disease) is very liable to mutations, and the immune system actually 'selects' for beneficial mutant antibodies? (The lecturer said he didn't know how it was done)

They're the X-Men of the immune system!

Random word for today: antigen

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