02.13.2008 - 1:27 p.m.

The class I�m taking is about how people learn. And I have to tell you that while I find the subject itself fascinating, it�s a hard class for me to process. For the last few weeks, we�ve been dealing with brain chemistry and anatomy, what structures a thought flows through as it goes from sensation to emotion to integration to decision to action, and assorted other things that float into and out of my own brain without being absorbed very much.

My brain is, and has always been, most interested in the functionality of things, meaning: if I�m going to teach, then yes, I want to know what makes it easier or harder for people to learn. I want to know that if my students are afraid (of me, of a test, that they are stupid) then they might have better access to long-term memories, but will not be able to do as much creatively until and unless I can relax them. I do not need to know what an anterior cingulate is in order to do this, and so my brain mostly refuses to store that sort of information. Even though I�m being graded on it. Thanks, brain.

Last night, we started with a pop quiz, with the injunction to pay attention to the ways our brains dealt with that experience�what kinds of things we felt or thought of, what was harder than normal, what was easier than normal. Then we got into discussing all those structures I don�t care about, and then there was a fire drill.

The instructor, in a somewhat suspect decision, told us to stay there for a moment while she made a phone call to check if it was real�apparently the alarms had been going off twice a week or so, because it was a new building, and they hadn�t remembered to insulate a pipe in the sprinkler system. So the fire alarm goes off whenever it drops below freezing. She wanted us to stay in case the alarms could be turned off in a minute.

We, in an extremely suspect mob-decision, listened to her. We sat there, still trying to fill out group worksheets, while the alarms buzzed and flashed in a way that made it completely impossible to think. (sidebar: Why are alarms designed to make thinking impossible? Wouldn�t people escaping a burning building need to be able to think?) Yes, my groupmates and I packed up our things to get ready to go, but *honestly*. Twenty-five people, all not leaving a possibly-burning building just because nobody else was.

We finally did leave, when the public safety guy came by to tell us we were idiots, and gathered briefly outside where half the students muttered about how dangerous the instructor was. Which entertained me, because I didn�t see them disobeying, either. And I�ll grant you, on our campus, ignoring fire drills is a learned behavior�every fall, the girls� dorm has one every couple of nights for a few weeks, because the freshman boys who pull the alarm want to see them outside in their nightclothes. Or sometimes, a girl wants to see if her boyfriend will emerge from her best friend�s room. The boys� dorm has them fairly regularly too, although that�s usually because a lacrosse ball has hit the alarm at high speed.

Anyway, point is, I learned so much about brains last night. I even learned that they call it a "hippocampus" because it looks kind of like a seahorse, and also... um... whatever it is that hippocampii actually do.

-stonebridge

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