Aaaaah…

… there is a clash in my timetable and I might have to find an alternative course for “Information Processing in Biological Cells”. Thus, I went today morning to some biology lectures in order to ask, whether it is possible to attend them as a visiting student. First of all, it was not easy to find the lecture rooms. Some of them were only accessible through other buildings, some doors were simply locked and I had to go some stairs up and down again to find an exit out of the maze I was stucked in. Additionally, I got confused with the room number and waited in the wrong one together with some other biologists for the lecturer. then a girl of the group said jokingly: “Hey, we can instead go to the Cell Cycle course next door.” I heard the crucial words: Cell and Cycle, I packed together all my stuff and said “I actually wanted to go to the Cell Cycle lecture, goodbye!”. Maybe, it was a little bit funny…

Fortunately, the biologists are very nice and they welcomed me very friendly to their courses. Unfortunately, the content of the courses is either not my subject of interest or there is too much assumed to be known.
“The Cell Cycle: DNA Replication, Segregation and Checkpoints” e.g. was a bit too detailed and I think, I would gain almost nothing from learning these details. “Cellular Mechanisms in Development” seemed to be very interesting and after the first hour of introductory lecture, I thought that this would be a great candidate for a substitution, but the second hour was quite a bit desillusionating. The lecturer talked about roughly 20 different proteins and enzymes, I knew up to 6 of these. And even now I do not know much more, since he abbreviated their names all the time and since his handwriting was not that readable, I did not even get all of these abbreviations. However, when he mentioned boolean logics, it felt a bit more
like home, but this was then introduced as being the most difficult thing ever seen. Nevertheless, I was thinking about trying the course, since I can look up all the unknown terms in Wikipedia after the lectures. But now, the tutorial on Bioinformatics will clash with the course. Thus, “Information Processing…” is still my favourite candidate and I hope that it will be re-scheduled. My Director of Studies was very helpful and told me that the lecturer would change the slot if the other participants agree. Since these are only 6, I am optimistic!