By Ragha Suresh
This semester, I became the adoptive mother of approximately 300 small creatures. Here’s a picture of one of them — he has my eyes.
Completing the “Fly Lab” is a stressful, but necessary rite of passage for all Biology majors. You have to check on them at ungodly hours to make sure that they’re not trying to have sex with their children. Sometimes, they spontaneously die which is more than slightly inconvenient. They also smell really bad. But I guess if you can overlook all that, they have a certain charm to them. Whenever I leave my flies in the incubator overnight, I like to pretend that I’m a parent dropping my child off at daycare — it makes me feel very cool and grown-up.
Anyway, I think that the most important lesson that I will take from the experience thus far, is to understand what I’m doing. It sounds so absurdly simple, yet it is often overlooked. I still remember how my roommate and I came back to the dorm after the first day of the lab. We were so confused about the procedure – we didn’t even fully understand what we were trying to figure out. After moping around for a good four hours, eating Ramen noodles, and watching a sitcom, we decided that we were going to figure this lab out. We read and reread the instructions, referenced the textbook, and probably drew about a million diagrams. Then it hit us. I can honestly say that that moment of enlightenment was the most wonderful feeling ever. Even though tending to the flies is tedious, the fact that I know what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and how to do it makes the process more bearable and allows for efficient troubleshooting. I think this is true with any task. For example, the thought of completing 200 problems in organic chemistry when you’re completely clueless about the material is overwhelming. But once you understand the concepts, it doesn’t seem as bad (time-consuming maybe, but certainly not impossible).
In an effort to help my fellow students get their own “moments of enlightenment”, I applied to be a tutor at the TCNJ Tutoring Center. I’ve only been tutoring for about 2 weeks, but I really enjoy it. Being a tutor has taught me to be patient and resourceful, but more importantly it has made me selfless — I genuinely want to see these hardworking students succeed. Coming from a competitive high school, I’ve never really felt that way before and I like the feeling of working with someone to help them do well.
On a completely unrelated note, I wanted to share a picture of the toilet in my dorm. The little monster sticker makes me feel happy when I use the bathroom.
The Sophomore Year Experience at TCNJ 
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