Dear Virophiles, 

Hello! If you stumbled upon this, you may be enrolled, or are contemplating enrolling, in Bob's Humans and Viruses class. If so, good for you! The class is life changing. Whether you are interested strictly in basic science or medicine, bioengineering or public health, global health or molecular biology, or any other field, this class will do so much for your personal, academic, and professional development. Still, at times the workload can be pretty intimidating. Here's a list of things that may be helpful for you to consider as you embark on one of the most epic journeys that Stanford has to offer: 

 

• Start the problem sets early, and type up the extra credit questions ahead of time. School is busy, but if you set aside time to do one (or half of one) question every day before the pset is due, you won't have to stay up until 5 am to finish a pset! Typing up the EC is a way to commit to doing some every problem set, too!

• Get to know your classmates! Everyone in your class is super cool and motivated -- that's why you're all in Humans and Viruses. You'll be spending a lot of class time together--make it fun, make it memorable. You'll be happy you did, and the mutual suffering will never be greater. 

• Get to know Bob.  Bob has more stories than you can imagine. Court cases, run-ins with rabies, famous people, previous students, you name it: Bob knows something about everything, and he's always happy to share. 

• Get excited about the material...there's a lot of it.  Infectious disease is cool for so many reasons! Find the ones that are most salient for you, and hold on to them. (You'll need it when it's 4 a.m. and you're still building your virus model.)