The art of leaving things out

Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

Recently, I was given the task of preparing a lecture for medical undergraduates on “Arthropods of medical importance”. In one hour, I was to cover quite a vast area, including medically important mosquitoes, flies, fleas, lice, ticks and mites. Initially I felt that I should include many facts in order to cover the given lecture objectives. I read extensively, from text books, to CDC website, watched videos of life cycles and ended up reading many interesting historical accounts on plague pandemics and even the constituents of the beaked mask worn by doctors during plague in the 17th century. I tried to include some of these into the lecture as well, and decided to send links of the other interesting articles to be read before the lecture as I though it would put some context into what the students were about to learn. Having studied this topic as a medical student as well as a postgraduate student, it was only while preparing to teach it that I truly understood how unique this subject is- how parasitology bridges virology, bacteriology, public health, entomology, and even world history.

However, I realised that my Power Point presentation was now too long and extensive. It was pretty obvious that I would not be able to cover the whole thing in one hour. A chapter in a spiritual book I was reading during this time gave me an eye-opening advice- ‘The things you can see only when you slow down’ by Haemin Sunim. In one chapter, he explains how he, as an enthusiastic lecturer, seeing the students being so engaged in his classes, gave extra assignments and reading material. This was initially perceived well but later resulted in tiring and losing interest among some students, probably due to the additional burden added. He mentions how he realized the need to balance between his passion for teaching with the students’ capacity to learn. This shift had resulted in a positive outcome.

The book perfectly explained how important it was to not to get carried away with our own enthusiasm and how important it was to strike a balance between eagerness and effectiveness. Eventually, I reduced some of the content from my lecture, not because those areas were less important, but because I believed that the students needed a little space for learning.