4 Grades & Expectations This course is for you.  It's for you to see new ways of looking at disease, medicine, and molecules.  How then can we chart your progress, look at your thinking, and determine whether you are getting the most out of this course?  It's easy really.  You write it down. For each of the weeks, you'll write a one page paper (2 pages double spaced) paper on the topic of the week.  This should be original thinking: what you don't like about the papers, what you do, what you think ought to be done next.  Better yet, some analysis you've done on your own and an idea for an entirely new approach.  Your paper can include pictures, graphs, whatever helps you communicate.  Do not simply give me the cliff notes to the papers, I've read them too, I don't want to see memorization, I want to see original thought. Everyone has a bad week or two, travel for interviews, a cold, or just the desire to stay home.  We are going to each get to skip up to two weeks where we don't hand in a paper.  That gives us some slack.   To get a grade in this course, you must have submitted on the weeks the topics were relevant.  No exceptions. I will read your paper and hand it back the next week on monday.  You are free to revise your paper and resubmit it: the process of rewriting papers is a critical learning experience and something that everyone does.  No scientist gets the words right the first time, the process of writing about science always involves a first try, a revision, a second try and so forth.  At the end of the semester, on the last day, with no exceptions, you will hand in the revised versions of your papers for a final grade.  I will be grading the papers both in terms of what you have done as well as how far you have come. This course is for you, and you will get out of it what you put into it. Your final papers will be returned to you after grading.  If this is your last semester, and you are leaving early, leave me your mailing address so I can return your papers to you.  I hope that will all keep these papers, and I hope that you will, in the years to come, look back at them with a sense of pride and achievement.