Cell biology was an interesting class. Learning the pathways and mechanisms used by cells for normal function helped me to understand why certain things are important, for example oxygen in the air we breathe. It also helped me understand how some medications work and how disease and infection can cause adverse effects. I also got to learn about botulinum toxin and how it effects the body on a cellular level, which was very fascinating. The accompanying smart biology work and videos really helped me to visualize what is going on so that I now have a solid understanding of what happens on a subcellular level. The workload was less than I expected, with weekly discussion questions being the hardest aspect for me. It was hard to think of questions because normally when I am curious about something, I just research it myself. However, it forced me to think harder about what we learned in order to find a topic to ask about. My study technique seemed to be effective based on my quiz grades throughout the semester. To my past self I would say to refresh on material covered in the previous class before every class. This would have greatly improved my ability to answer the Top Hat questions at the beginning of every class. I would also tell myself to start writing the research papers in advance. I am a procrastinator and it was very stressful waiting until the last few days to find sources, conceptualize what I wanted to write about, and writing out my papers. I had a bad habit of considering the workloads of my classes individually instead of as a whole, making it feel like I wouldn’t have as much work to do as I actually had, causing me to have really bad weekends trying to catch up on everything all at once.