Wacky High School Stories, part I

At the time, it was amusing or seemingly worthwhile. Everyone was doing it. Now in retrospect, some things about high school make me stop dead in my tracks and ask: "Why?"

For example: Senior biology. It was IB biology, ergo, quite a challenging course. Theoretically, of course, and in reality it was still high school and mostly taught to the test.

We did a lot of study of celluar structure, including the organelles within human cells. Mitochondria and the nucleus and Golgi apparatus and my personal favorite (as shall be explained shortly) endoplasmic reticula.

Our teacher - who I must say was wonderfully dedicated and patient with us young hellions - decided that a good hands-on project would help us learn about these. So we were all assigned an organelle, told to research it, and then build a scale model of it. We would then have an entire scale mockup of a gigantic human cell.

Being obedient little students, we did so. I ended up with a mass of duct-tape tubing, which was the closest thing I could fathom to the smooth endoplasmic reticulum. In reality, it looked like absolutely nothing, just a mass of plasticky tape stuffed into a box to hold it all together. But it took me a decent amount of time to actually construct it, and apparently by high school standards, that meant not only was it good, but I'd learned something. (It wasn't, and I didn't.)

Finally, the day came. We'd all concluded our presentations in class. From somewhere, our teacher produced a massive lump of white plastic sheeting, and I mean truly massive. It would eventually be a cube, and was something like two meters on a side.

The first obstacle was figuring out where to put this two-meter-per-side cube, and we eventually managed to squeeze it in between two lab tables in the back of the room, effectively blocking the second door to the classroom, which I believe is a major fire code violation. Then, we had to figure out how to inflate it, and, after about twenty minutes of trial-and-error, sat someone down with a desk fan in the back of it. There was an door flap cut out there, but if left unsupervised, the actual flap would, well, flap back down over the fan, cutting off it's air intake. The cell would collapse, the fan wouldn't be happy, and we'd all cry. I made up that last part, actually.

So, we get it spread out in the back of the classroom, and we get it inflated. Then we all go and enter the Large Bulbous White Cube Which Represents A Cell, and bring our Grotesquely Large Organelles. I believe that the nucleus was a cut-up basketball. May it never be said that we weren't creative.

And then, we stood there, in our inflatable white room. The fan whirred merrily away. We'd decided that the cell was a no-shoes zone, as we didn't to rip the bottom, and the linoleum was curiously cold and slick beneath our socks and the plastic.

That, basically, was it. We stood around for a few minute in a big inflatable white room, and managed to shorten class by a couple minutes every day in the following week by inflating it. A few weeks later there was some sort of after-school affair. I think it was the official opening of the brand-new school auditorium, the one where when they were constructing it they managed to set the fire alarm off every day for about three weeks. True story.

Anyway, there was this shindig with varous choral groups singing in the hallway, and some student showcases, art and the like. And, of course, our Giant Inflatable White Room. We all went, and stood in it with our organelles for a few more minutes. At some point we'd cut a couple windows out and replaced them with clear plastic, and a few curious people peered into the Giant Inflatable White Room. I think I was one of the first people to leave - I left my organelle there on the floor, and perhaps it was better that way, as everyone knows that there aren't people in Giant White Cells.

Anyway, that was one of the biggest projects we did in senior bio. It was a Higher Level IB class and worth something like 10 credits. Things I learned: Giant cells are about as exciting as they sound.