Your College Biology Experience

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I finally have to take my hard science requirement. Astronomy is out - too much math. Chemistry is out - too much memorization. Pretty much down to biology and geology.

Geology is boring, and I have to waste a weekend on a field trip identifying rocks in Oklahoma.

Biology - there's potential for dissection in the lab, right? I don't think I can do that anymore. Cracking open the fetal pig's skull was awesome in junior high, but...

So, uh, did you have to cut anything up in college biology?

― milo z (mlp), Friday, 5 January 2007 02:01 (eighteen years ago)

Do you have to take a lab science or just a lecture?

― Jessie the Monster (scarymonsterrr), Friday, 5 January 2007 02:04 (eighteen years ago)

Lab. And psych, despite being part of the College of Science, doesn't count.

― milo z (mlp), Friday, 5 January 2007 02:05 (eighteen years ago)

Yes, but I was a biology major. Can you ask around with classmates to see if there's a dissection component in the non-majors biology classes offered at your school? (The course catalog might give you a hint as well).

― Sara R-C (Sara R-C), Friday, 5 January 2007 02:06 (eighteen years ago)

Lowest level astronomy course was what I used, it was a total joke, and a lot less math than you'd expect. What about Anthropology?

I feel like the non-majors Bio lab at my school doesn't have dissection.

― Jessie the Monster (scarymonsterrr), Friday, 5 January 2007 02:07 (eighteen years ago)

Will a requirement-filling intro-to-astronomy class seriously involve that much math? Pretty sure that's how I filled out my hard sciences undergrad requirements, and it was mostly just, you know, what are various space phenomena and what do they do.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 5 January 2007 02:08 (eighteen years ago)

xp - I don't really know anyone on this particular campus, I just show up to class and leave as soon as it's over, mostly nights. All my friends went elsewhere (or nowhere).

I'll double-check astronomy, but when I spent more than three hours a week on campus it had a reputation as the class not to take for non-science people.

― milo z (mlp), Friday, 5 January 2007 02:10 (eighteen years ago)

ok, just found last spring's BIO lab sylllabi. No dissection, but they require an insect collection - I didn't even want to do mine in eighth grade.

― milo z (mlp), Friday, 5 January 2007 02:14 (eighteen years ago)

I took chemistry. We dissected frogs and earthworms and some other animals in elementary school. That's my only experience with dissection. I think I still remember what formaldehyde (sp?) smells like.

― youn (youn), Friday, 5 January 2007 02:19 (eighteen years ago)

Astronomy was hella easy, almost no maths, AND I got to learn the wonderful phrase "bok globule," though beats me what one is.

I loved biology in HS, I plan on getting my major in it now, but I failed biology 3 times at my old campus. Bio 101. This because I never went to class. We learned a lot more about the Kreb's cycle and phospholipid bilayers and complex anaerobic activity cycles and blah blah blah. A lot more memorization and no fun in the labs. No dissection. I did enough of that in my high school "dissection biology" class, but hell, I have a certain expectation in a bio lab and that is cutting up things other than apples, which we experimented on a lot for some reason in college.

― Abbott (Abbott), Friday, 5 January 2007 02:56 (eighteen years ago)

Though now I see that isn't what you're looking for so I hope you don't mind cutting up apples. If you do mind, don't get a guinea pig, another thing not required for your biology class. Guinea pigs like apple slices.

― Abbott (Abbott), Friday, 5 January 2007 02:58 (eighteen years ago)

The two easiest at my school were oceanography and astronomy. My dormmate at the time took astronomy and he didn't have much work at all. I took oceanography and we threw papers in the ocean and watched them float back.

― svend (svend), Friday, 5 January 2007 03:01 (eighteen years ago)

Physics 101 is the way to go here. The math is easy if you know even a little bit of calculus and, more importantly, the labs are much less work than chemistry etc. My girlfriend thought she'd be clever and take geology--and spent three consecutive nights coloring a huge elaborate topographical map.

― adam (adam), Friday, 5 January 2007 03:16 (eighteen years ago)

I haven't taken a math class in almost eight years, anything involving trig or calculus is out of the question.

― milo z (mlp), Friday, 5 January 2007 03:37 (eighteen years ago)

As much as I dread science, 6 hours of math is going to kill me. I really should have planned ahead instead of taking 12 hours of art classes and putting off the things I didn't care about.

― milo z (mlp), Friday, 5 January 2007 03:38 (eighteen years ago)

If you know even a little bit of calculus

THIS IS NOT EASY

― Laurel (Laurel), Friday, 5 January 2007 03:51 (eighteen years ago)

I was a bio major, I took calculus, but physics was the class that caused me to quit being a premed. I'm sure the non-majors physics class is easier than what I was taking, but if you're wanting to avoid math... I'd go for the bio.

― Sara R-C (Sara R-C), Friday, 5 January 2007 04:23 (eighteen years ago)

If it's Newtonian physics, then maybe. All you need for that is basic algebra -- but I realize that may not be easy either.

― Laurel (Laurel), Friday, 5 January 2007 04:29 (eighteen years ago)

i wish i had taken more (any, if you discount neuroscience for poets) science in college. i also wish that if was going to substitute math, i hadn't been an idiot and gone into the calculus section for engineers. i eschewed such things then, but i'd love to be studying some geology right now.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 5 January 2007 04:37 (eighteen years ago)

You would certainly improve at the mineral category in your "animal, mineral or vegetable" game.

― Abbott (Abbott), Friday, 5 January 2007 05:07 (eighteen years ago)

nine years pass...

I want to go back to school to study zymology. I would be last in my class because I always hated chemistry and math but who cares. it's basically the best thing anybody can learn how to do.

― bothan zulu (El Tomboto), Saturday, 7 May 2016 13:35 (nine years ago)

not just to learn the beer and wine business though, like the appalachian state program, I want to know how the hell you make sour cream and blue cheese and yogurt without everything going sideways and bad

― bothan zulu (El Tomboto), Saturday, 7 May 2016 13:54 (nine years ago)

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