The last time I was in school the Internet was just beginning to form. This was before the Dot Com Boom. Before Hotmail became part of Microsoft. When Excite was more important than Yahoo and Google was just a funny name. During that time, which seems so long ago even though it's not, studying for an exam mainly involved notes and a textbook. If it was a lab practical, say for biology, it involved drawing detailed diagrams of what you were seeing. The students who did the best on those exams were ones who brought in colored pencils, filling in every conceivable detail they could sketch on their lab manual. My skills as an artist caused everything to look like an abstract painting version of the same thing.
Most of my labs would have some version of the follow conversation with my lab partner:
"What is that," my lab partner would ask pointing at the painstaking drawing before me.
"Columnar cells."
She (My lab partners were always women.) would pick up the sheet of paper rotating it in front of her face.
"Are you sure? Cause this doesn't look anything like the slide."
Invariably I never did very well on the lab practicals.
Fast forward - how many years? - to what in the eyes of technology is an eon. There are so many new tools available it is staggering sometimes. In the case of lab practicals Google Images or Yahoo and Flickr are an amazing resource.
The best part of this is that the artistically deficient do not have to rely souly on their rushed renderings. For example the study list for my current biology practical included a fetal pig dissection. Found that. Even though the sheep heart wasn't on the exam I found a better primer for the basic structures than the actual lab. You can also buy one for $3.80. Then their was the earthworm. Not the best photos but there it is. I was having trouble finding the male version of the ginkgophyta plant. But here it is. What do juniper berries look like again? Oh yeah.
It is all at your fingertips. God bless the Internet for making it easier for slackers to keep pace with the overachievers.
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