Biology Experiments

I think my brother says on the site somewhere that I'm an aspiring doctor. That's a debatable statement at best. Apparently doctors have to go through an extra 4 years of medical school after college. I only recently found that out. For a long time I thought all you had to do was beat a guy up and steal his white coat in a challenge-for-dominance kind of thing. It was supposed to be a challenge because the defending doctor is allowed to use the stethoscope as a mace.

I am definitely studying Biology though. I guess I don't come off as a pro-science kind of guy because people give me weird looks when I tell them what I'm in school for. I don't really know why. Maybe it was my involvement in the local witch trials last month. You burn one person at the stake and people make assumptions about you for the rest of your life. It's really unfair.

I really like Biology. Most people ask if I'm on a med school track because that's what most Biology majors go into. I usually tell them that "No; I'm studying Biology so I can figure out Nature's weaknesses and kill her in a scientific battle royale," or sometimes "I don't know why I'm in Biology. I guess I've just always been interested in puppets." Obviously these reasons are jokes. I have no interest in puppets (because they're like midgets but rarely as funny) and Nature is already my filthy mistress--she need not be destroyed.

The actual reason that I study Biology is because it has to be the softest hard science ever to be created. Naturally I'm not counting Psychology or Political Science as real sciences (no arguments from anyone, those fields are both entirely made up). I barely even count Biology as science right now.

I still have to do a lot of core classes so the Bio course I'm in is a fairly low level. At the same time I take a low level chemistry to fill degree requirements. Both classes are large lectures. Both have a lab. Both of them are academically set up the same way (4 tests, little homework). But otherwise they're not really very similar. In Chem we're supposed to show up to the lab sections with pre-labs, post-labs, lab manuals, lab notebooks, lab equipment key, and an understanding of that day's experimental procedures. In the Bio lab we show up. Hopefully you have a lab manual--if not, whatevs. The Chemistry experiments take around 2 hours or more, with diligent data recording. The Biology "experiments" take about 10 minutes. They usually involved looking at something pretty in a microscope. And don't bother writing anything down, there's not going to be anything due, ever. We're just looking at the colorful slides.

The first week in Biology we learned what the scientific method is. I would punch myself in the crotch if any 7th grader, randomly approached, could not explain to me what a hypothesis is.

The notes I took in class today was the most awful waste of paper. And yes, they will be put online when I can figure out how to work a scanner. One huge upside to Biology (which will make sense when I scan my notes) is that a lot of cute girls take Biology. I think it's a save the furry little animal kind of thing.

Anyway, that's why Biology rocks my world.