Microscopy, taught at the bench.

Most microscopy courses are a textbook full of diagrams with a few slides bolted on. This one is the reverse. Every week is built around a technique you perform at the bench — focusing a scope, preparing a wet mount, staining for contrast, resolving and identifying a structure — and the reading exists to support that work. That is what "skill-led, not textbook-led" means, and it is the single most important thing to understand about how this course runs.

The course is organized as a two-day rhythm: a Concept Day where the technique is introduced and demonstrated up close, and an Experiment Day where it becomes physical — set up, focused, mounted, drawn — and gets written into a real lab notebook. Between the two days, the student practices at home, and that gap is where the skill actually consolidates.

Mastery is the progression rule. A student advances through a technique when they can perform, explain, and repeat it cleanly — not when the calendar says so. "Not yet" is the honest, expected default; "mastered" is earned and demonstrated. The rubrics are the instrument that makes that judgment fair and repeatable.