THE BRAIN

Did you like the lecture? Did you learn from it? How can you apply what you learned from your experiences in bridge?

 

Yesterday we attended a lecture at the Ferguson theatre by Professor Kevin Henry Ph.D. His lecture was supposed to talk about how visual images and how we use them to design items of the future. Dr. Henry touched on that for a few minutes and spent the next 55 talking about the brain. The brain is one of the organs in our body we know a lot about but there is so much more out there that we don’t know. He explained how our brains take information and process it quickly. He also goes onto to explain how three pounds of tissue does so much in as little as .003 milliseconds. The lecture was very interesting but very boring. As a student I know I am not going to be thrilled about every lecture I attend. I am also well aware I am not going to like every professor I have. Dr. Henry did not give a very good presentation. He rambled on with a lot of information which was very interesting did not really connect with his overall presentation. He put half of the auditorium to sleep even some of the bridge professors. I learned a lot from the presentation and I realized that maybe his point was to bore us but to also get us to take in that in college there are going to be great lectures like the zombies lecture and then boring ones like his. Dr. Henry was just trying to get us prepared for that mentally.

Dr. Henry touched on some interesting facts about the brain. As Humans it takes less than a second for the brain to send out all of these command functions to keep our bodies functioning internally and externally. He showed us an MRI view of the brain where the imaged was enhanced to show all of the electric pulse commands the brain is sending through a million nerves at a time. It’s funny how our brains can do all that but it makes so much sense now why we can’t multitask like that externally. Dr. Henry provided great information for us about the science of the brain and how it develops from childhood to adult. Great information but useless when it comes to the overall theme of the presentation. The theme of the presentation was visual images and graphic arts and how we use those images to produce new design concepts. While the brain is important in that field and even in everyday life, it was not relevant to his lecture topic.

Dr. Henry’s presentation was good information but boring. I sat there next to my classmates and friends and wondered why he was not engaging with us. Most of the other lecturers engaged with us or attempted to engage with us. Dr. Henry just talked his way through the entire lecture. I don’t think his intent in the beginning was to bore us but as the presentation dragged on and saw we were not as engaging as advertised then like decided that he should keep talking until time was up. The buddy system was well used yesterday. When students began to fall asleep a buddy would be like “wake up dude” and try to stay awake. It was extremely difficult to do but most students like myself managed to make it to the finish line.

The more I think about it and as the days go by, the more college is approaching. The real deal. Bridge is just a test to see if you’re able to handle it, now the challenge comes. Dr. Henry when he began to bore us he knew who the real students were. The real students were doing everything humanly possible to stay up during the presentation. The underlying theme and what we as students are all here at bridge for is that we are not going to like every single lecture or teacher or student or roommate etc. He showed us that we just have to take notes and deal with it because that is just how things are. A lot of things will be good but there are going to be bad, you just have to be positive either way.