I survived !!. Review on Wikipedia

?Hey Sujata, you have to give a lecture in an hour?s time from now.?

I look up from the sea of paperwork I have been drowning in and surfacing from since the past two hours and stare in panic at the person who has got these awful tidings ?You are kidding. Tell me it?s a joke, please !?

?No dear, it?s true. The person who was supposed to take this class is on leave. So it?s your class. The orders from above. We have to follow them.? A cheeky smile.

I try to calm myself down and finally ask ?What is the topic of the lecture ??

?Protein signaling transduction.? A cheekier smile.

This is it. Now nothing can save me. I am DEAD! I have an hour to make slides AND give a class to a bunch of supersmart post graduates on a topic that has always been like Greek and Latin to me. I am finished.

?Someone please write my obituary !? I yell to no one in particular.

One of my colleagues shouts from behind ?When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.? A shout of combined laughter. I respond by throwing a book in the general direction of that wicked voice.

?When in doubt, call Mr. Google.? Another smart aleck speaks up.

Now that?s a useful one. I request protein signaling pathways from Mr. Google and go through the number of web sites he usually comes up with. After mucho wandering around in circles, I hit gold !

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (https://en.wikipedia.org/)

If you are wondering about if an encyclopedia can help with such a super specialized and technical topic, then the answer is yes. Wikipedia has great information about any and every subject and it can be retrieved by simply typing in your key words and hitting the ?Go? button. It is really as simple as that. The articles about every topic are written in the simplest English (Not Greek and Latin : )) and extremely easy to go through.

Also the terms and the concepts that are included in one article are hyperlinked to other articles so that all the terms are clearly defined by the time you finish reading. That much is for befuddled souls like me but if you are the genius variety who likes to actually sit down and write articles on technical and scientific themes, then there is more for you. Wikipedia has a community portal where you can actually create and edit our own articles.

There are open tasks sorted by name where contributions are invited and hey, if you have the time and the brains, why not ! Then there is another category called ?Current Events? where one is updated with the latest events worldwide. The best feature of Wikipedia is that it?s free. No more libraries and no more heavy books.

Since that fateful day, I have been using Wikipedia very often and with fruitful results too. If I need quick information about any topic within seconds, I know what to hit.

P.S. My class went very smoothly that day. Great slides and fantastic performance by yours truly ; )