The SMART program is responsible for teaching freshman biology, chemistry, and calculus. These courses are foundational to all future STEM majors, and they lay the groundwork for the more advanced classes. However, a unique aspect of this SMART is the focus on integrating these different fields of study. The professors are intentional in designing their classes to highlight the overlap between disciplines. I found this to be a very valuable opportunity as a learner. In the real world, the different flavors of STEM are constantly mixing, but in a classroom setting, these intersections are rarely emphasized. 

This was exemplified through lab cross-overs. In biology, we completed a qPCR assay to teach us about viral load detection of HIV. Then we took the raw data we collected in bio lab, and we applied principles we learned in calculus to create a standard curve and how to evaluate the success of the qPCR. This is a critical component to analyze the change in fluorescence so we can determine the results of the qPCR. Standard curves are very frequently used in lab to determine results, but in the past, my science teachers would create them for us and give some summary of how to make one. Now, I feel confident in my ability to create a standard curve, and I will be relying on this skill later in my science education/career. Additionally, there was a major intersection of disciplines in the last lab, lab 7. We spent a large portion of our biology first semester learning about proteins/ enzymes. Then, this semester in chemistry lab we wanted to evaluate enzymatic reaction rates, so we used calculus to derive a Michaelis Menten graph. I had already been exposed to the concept of Michaelis Menten in Bio200 this spring, but the calculus implications were not touched on as in-depth as they were in SMART. This first exposure left me with a lot of questions that round two Michaelis Menten in SMART was able to answer. 

This semester, I decided I needed a change in who I collaborated with for team quizzes. Last semester, I had some grievances with my partner. Team quizzes felt like a bad tutoring session taught by me. Matt, Melvin, and I are such good partners, it felt nice I could trust my partners to put in the same level of work I was towards understanding. Last semester, I had a more difficult partner and although I was able to reconcile with being the only one who knew what was going on most of the time it was really nice to work with people I could actually collaborate with. We would put our heads together on quizzes and problem solve what we were not completely sure about together. Of course, sometimes we got learning targets wrong, but having a chance to collectively critically made every attempt valuable. 

I continued frequenting the board, it worked for me last semester, so why stop? This time, however, I tended to struggle more with the concepts than I did last semester. So, going up to the board was even more helpful. I would do things wrong more often than not it felt like. I could always count on Jessica to call me out on it or I would turn around to see Dr. Torres staring at my problem with a furrowed brow. While maybe this once upon a time would have bruised my ego, I am more sure than ever of the benefits of getting things wrong. A lot of the time in class one is just trying to keep up with the notes. Having so many eyes looking at your work brings out where you have a misconception fast. This helped me narrow down what I needed to review for the next class.

I found the content this semester to be more challenging than last semester. I took AP calc BC in high school which really prepared me for this class. The calc I portion stuck with me, but I wish I could say the same for calc II. While I think having previous exposure did help me not be completely blindsided by topics, I had to relearn pretty much everything. At the beginning of the semester, I was expecting everything to roll as smoothly as the fall. It was not until I was faced with a mini quiz where I had barely an idea what I needed to do. I needed to sit in the discomfort of not being sure how to solve the problem in order to come to this realization. 

To counteract my confusion, I promised myself to make sure to do the homeworks and guided studies. This too was a very different experience than last semester, for it presented itself with some struggles. The Edifinity homework at times was very difficult. I had a bit of a learning curve with using the website, and for some of the problems, I had a hard time applying what I learned in class to figure out the question (thank goodness we had six attempts for every question). This made sticking to my promise to complete almost all the homeworks quite time consuming. As I was taking 5 credits this semester, I was not sure how I was going to fit it all in. Fortunately, I was able to overcome this. I discovered my work at the CSI desk was the perfect time to sit and struggle with calculus. It was a place of minimal distractions, and I allowed myself to forget about the piles of other things I needed to do that evening. It was a time just to focus on calc. Additionally, a lot of my coworkers had already gone through calc II and were so kind as to explain things to me if I was absolutely lost.

Over the span of both semesters, Dr. Torres has been trying to improve our ability to communicate quantitative information. We were required to add words to our solutions to tell a story with our work and to clearly show what we did to solve it. I understood her reasoning when it came to labs or tests, but I did not particularly get the memo when it came to notes. I thought, eh whatever, they are my notes anyway. I do not need to show the intermediate steps. I get what is happening between the lines. Then at the beginning of this semester, when tasked to journal about how we had improved our skills to communicate what was happening in our notes, I had no good examples to provide. The journal I submitted was less than underwhelming and hardly understandable from a learner’s perspective. 

This bare-bone note taking technique worked for a while. Then, as I mentioned before, the content of the class got more difficult and I was not keeping up like I once was. I could not get through the homework with just what I remembered from class. I needed coherent notes. My notes needed to become actually helpful, so I changed my ways. I took the time to copy questions down to provide more context to the mathematical process I was completing. As this was not what I was used to, it took some practice to be able to keep up in class, but eventually, I got the hang of it. Overall, taking the time to communicate more of a story with math instead of having random numbers everywhere deepened my understanding in class. Furthermore, it not only helped me get through my homework, it made the whole struggle process quicker since I no longer had to decode what I was trying to solve.