Tips to Your Success in This Class

These are the tips from Akiko's own experience in Ecosystems.

Know your enemy, in other words, Dr. Hall. This class is not only about ecology in textbooks. Large part of this class is about getting you exposed to "HALListic" view of ecosystems on the top of ordinary ecology. Check his academic backgrounds, research interests, and publication histories. You will get some idea of what desciplines influenced his ecosystems view and where he is getting at. Also know what his hobbies are. It's common knowledge that he is into fishing and ice hockey, among other things. For example, you will realize that his examples are often from fishing and fisheries, partially because he likes fishing and partially because he studied fisheries.
Write down your own short summaries of the articles when you do your readings. It would help when you go back to the article and try to remember quicikly what that paper was about without having to read the whole article again.
Be able to link the authors' names and the theses of their articles. The assigned reading materials are all primary articles which are extensively cited in other scientific papers. There are specific reasons Dr. Hall has you read these articles. When you read them, think why Dr.Hall wanted you to read this paper, and how the idea of that paper is consistent with Dr. Hall's ecosystem concept. Dr. Hall asks you to support your exam answers with your readings and cite them with author names (and years).
Keep the class discussion in the right track. Dr. Hall cherishes spontaneous class discussions, which often are very exciting when students are interested in the topic. But back side of this spontaneity is often getting away from the original topic before making any points of it and never coming back to finish the initial discussion. I personally got lost in this drifting discussion many times. If you feel the same way, you should stop him and ask "wait, so, what was your point about ....?"
If you hear unfamiliar words during the lecture, don't be afraid to stop Dr. Hall and ask what the words mean and how to spell them. He will talk about various new ideas, scientists, and plants and animals in the world that have never been exposed to and cannot be found even in your readings. Don't think it's only you who don't know the words. We have students with various backgrounds with different streangth and weakness in their knowledge. The odds are, some others of you don't know the words either. Dr. Hall doesn't write down those words on the board unless you ask him to. So ask him about the unfamiliar words right at that moment you heard it. If you don't ask and don't even know how to spell it, how can you look up that word later in the dictionary?!

This is about all I can say now. If you took this course and there are some tips you can add, please send me an e-mail.

This page was updated on 3/4/02 by Akiko Ogawa.