I have been up for longer than I care to remember and my mind is wandering off to the fringes of insanity. And I feel I must say something about this class. This particular medium may not be the best, and I will undoubtedly post a similar message on Class Comments, but as I said I'm not exactly in the best mindset for thinking strait. I have been taking a rather annoying neurobiology course, hence my near insanity. But recently I've been wondering why the hell is this class so hard? The professor is good, he is clearly knowledgeable about the subject and at the same time approachable by students. The subject material is truly fascinating - neuroanatamy, neural pathways, chemical messengers, cell structures, equivalent circuits etc., etc. I've learned a shitload in excruciating detail. The course is called "Introduction to Neurobiology" and therein lies the problem. It implies that the class covers a broad range of subjects. And it does. But it also implies that the details of each subject is fairly general - yes you get most of workings done but you don't have to know that a single photon hits the light-absorbing protein which is rhodopsin which changes the conformation from all-trans to 11-cis which activates a G-protein with alpha subunit transmodulin which activates cGNP-diesterase ......... but rather you would learn - light hits eye, G-protein coupled reaction leads to hyperpolarization of cell, interneuron depolarizes and sends action potential to LGN then to visual cortex. And there's the problem. The depth at which we cover each of these subjects is completely inappropriate for the breadth of the class. The expectations of this class are absolutely ridiculous. There's this sort of graph that classes should all follow - breadth vs. depth. If the depth is high, the breadth is low and vice versa. This class doesn't follow that rule. This class should die and go to hell. Blargh