#1. developmental mechanisms 2. stem cells and regen 3. dev genetics of model organisms 4. genetics and development (general)

[unopenablebox]

for reasons [did the 'taking classes' year of grad school in 2020/21 and was desperate not to be on zoom anymore] i only took 7/8 required credits for my phd when i was supposed to and now have to take a class. already kind of cringe and undignified given my advanced age in grad school years. but i couldn't even use it to take something like linalg that i actually need training in because it only counts toward my degree if it's a biology class. not only do i absolutely not need anyone to teach any biology topic to me at this point, because my job is to interpret and synthesize primary biology literature, but i also already took every even faintly relevant biology course in college, some of them twice, the majority of them at grad level with graduate students. and they were taught better and more effectively, because my undergraduate institution simply had better pedagogical practices than *** by basically any metric.

all of this has cashed out to me taking the paper-reading course about my field taught by one of my committee members, because it only meets once a week, i've read half the papers before, and it's graded on class participation which is my best stat. unfortunately, because it's taught by one of my committee members, i can't admit that i am taking it literally only for credit and would be capable of teaching the class given a couple of weeks to prep, and instead have to pretend that i am concerned about it meaningfully impairing my career that, while i have an encyclopedic knowledge of early embryonic development in flies and worms, i'm really more familiar with late embryonic development in mammals. this is requiring some contortions.