 Hi guys. So I just thought that this week is a good one for me to do a little quick video announcement, maybe a little pep talk in here because shockingly, it's week seven, which means exam two is next week. And after next week, we are halfway through the course. So I think that we should all, all of us, should give ourselves a big high five pat on the back. That wasn't a high five. This is a pat on the back high five because making it halfway through this online biology course, that's something to be proud of. So exam two coming up next week. I'm showing you week eight's module. It isn't published yet, but I just wanted to show you that exam two is in there already. My plan is to have it open on Sunday. So a week from today that will be open. And I'm planning on leaving it open through Wednesday. So basically you have Sunday through Wednesday to work through figuring out when you're going to take that exam. And of course you need to sort of commit to me about where you're going to take it. Are you going to go to the testing center or are you going to use the proctorio system in your house? One of the observations that I had, but when I was reviewing the proctorio footage to make sure everybody was being academically honest, which y'all were, was that many people were taking their exams in an environment that was not conducive for clear and thoughtful thought. So I encourage you to find a place to take your exam where you can really concentrate and have some peaceful time to take your time going through it and so it isn't stressful or stressful or stressful because our brains don't work as well when our sympathetic nervous systems, which is what makes you nervous, gets activated. Okay, so exam two is coming up. All the energy stuff and DNA is on exam two, and I'm telling you right now, this exam is harder than the last exam. So if there's any part of you that is thinking, oh, you know, I've been studying more, so I'm just going to do better just because I've been studying more, that's probably would keep you about where you were last time. So you really need to take a step up in making sure you understand what you're dealing with. We have two office hours like normal this week. I'm just going to scan on up here to remind you that in Canvas, you can click on the office hours. Let's hang out, like come and join the office hour fun times Monday from 6 to 7 p.m. or Thursday from noon to 1. And you know what? If you guys are like, dude, Riggs, let's have some study sessions. I'm in. Let's do it. Let's set up an additional Zoom session where we can answer questions and try to make something like that happen. So figure out how you want to approach the exam because you need to be prepping for that thing. Everything that I've got going on this week, so I'm going to take you down to week number seven. Oh, we made it. Week number seven has a lot of stuff going on, but it's all focused on helping you study for the exam, helping you interact with the material. So you do have two lectures worth of content. You're going to do DNA structure and replication, and then you're going to do how DNA functions. I never do this, but I am going to offer you a very rare and exciting extra credit opportunity. What? I seriously never offer extra credit. And so, and it's going to be real extra credit, and I'm going to throw it into your exam score, which I mean, that should actually make you super excited. So we're going to play bingo, and you are going to build yourself a bingo board. Oh, yeah. And you're going to throw amino acids, and this will make sense after you watch the second lecture because DNA, the way it functions, is it codes for amino acids. And it tells you the order in which you're going to put amino acids together to get this string of amino acids in a certain sequence, which folds all up in a nice little functional protein. So you're going to build a 25-spot bingo card with amino acids on it. And then on Thursday, I'm going to open up bingo. And I'm going to post 25 codons. So I'm going to throw 25 either a DNA codon or a messenger RNA codon, and it's going to go into this board, and then you get to take that, that, my list, and translate. You're going to figure out for this DNA codon what is the amino acid that's coded for. If this sounds super confusing, it's because you haven't watched the lecture yet. Once you watch the lecture, the last lecture on DNA function, you'll totally be like, dude, I can totally figure out the amino acid that goes with that DNA or RNA or tRNA sequence. And then you'll get to knock out your bingo board and we'll see who gets some winning prizes. Will there be prizes in addition to... I was going to say chocolate, but that's what I do in my face-to-face class, but I can't give you guys chocolate because I don't ever get to see you or hang out with you, which stinks. So I would give you chocolate, but maybe you're stoked that you don't get chocolate because it means you get extra credit. Don't tell my face-to-face students. They don't get extra credit. They get chocolate. Okay, so bingo will be super fun, right? And then I want to talk to you really quick about the lab for the week. So I'm doing an activity in lab that's actually going to be like a cut-and-paste activity. There is one lab that requires materials. You've got your grocery list. You're actually going to extract DNA from a strawberry. Super excited about that one. Actually, in all the rest of your lab activities are worksheets. They're problems. They're practice. And so I just wanted to show you the first one because what you'll notice is you get some instructions and you have to actually print out this worksheet that I have made for you. And if you have any troubles getting it out of the lab notebook, then I've posted that... the worksheet is actually posted in Canvas as well. You're going to cut out the molecules. You're going to make yourself a DNA molecule. You're going to take a picture of it and then answer some questions. I highly recommend taking advantage of the social aspect of the discussion board this week in your lab because you guys can hash out. You can compare answers and you can ask if you have issues with something. So this is a really good week to be really engaged in that lab group discussion board. That said, I also highly recommend that you do at least parts one, three, and four as soon as you've watched both lectures for the week. So get that rolling earlier than later because like I said, it's all really great practice for the exam. So identifying places that you are struggling is a really good thing. Okay, I think that that's everything that I want to tell you. Could that be the case? I'm super impressed with the discussions. I feel like we've definitely taken a step up with the discussions. I do want to mention something about this week's Muddy Fun. I'm trying something new and I'm a little bit nervous about it because I feel like I'm not sure that everybody's going to be able to see these things. If the Muddy Fun doesn't look like this, just try to answer the question without these options available. But I basically put together a poll for the several of the Muddy Fun questions that I post with the idea that you can vote on an answer. So you'll click on what answer you like and then you'll click vote. And then you can actually see the results of everybody and my thinking is that it will help us sort of quantify how everybody is feeling about a topic. You can go through the discussion and just vote on all of the questions, look at the results, and then the conversation won't be, this is what I think the answer is. The conversation will be, wait a second, why are a bunch of people voting for 60%, whatever the answer to this is. And I voted for 20%. Like, why did you guys do that? And hopefully it will improve the... I'm always searching to improve these discussion boards. I think we've made huge improvements, but I'm kind of excited about this option. If you can't see my polls, will you shoot me a message and let me know, because I can sort of mess with it. I'm using Firefox as the browser right now, and things seem to be working fine, but maybe it's a browser issue, maybe it's a flash issue, I don't know. So let me know if you're having issues with that and we'll see if we can troubleshoot it so that you can participate in the polling. If it works, the polling is going to change my world, because I always want to know answer, I want to know what you guys think about stuff, and it gets a little bit hard sometimes to get you to participate, but if all you have to do is click, that'll be easy, right? You'll click, right? Okay, tell me what you need this week. I'd be happy to set up an additional study session if anybody is interested in that, and I'm looking forward to our next exam. I think that I'm looking forward to improved outcomes. You know, and one more thing. One more thing. If you want to brainstorm de-stressing strategies, let me know about that too, because I have lots of ideas for ways to just feel better about questions that you don't know the answer to, not letting questions that you don't know the answer to, tank your entire rest of your exam. I've got some good ideas for how you guys can maximize what is in your brain, what you've got in there right now. Let's take advantage. Okay, you guys rock. I'm super excited for week seven, and holla, holla, if you have any questions. Bye-bye.