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Biology?


Kon
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what do you people think of biology?

I have been thinking about possible career avenues because I have absolutely no idea what I want to do, and I came across some video lectures of biology and am thinking it is rather interesting. It seems totally different from how I remember it in highschool. I find the whole study of how life works and is constructed interesting and it seems like a pretty visual type of study which I enjoy since I have been an artist all my life.

Also it seems like it will be a very important field in the future as the full scope of it isn't entirely known yet.

I'm wondering how feasible a career in biology would be for me though since ive spent most of my time simply drawing and stuff or doing other things.

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ha! If I knew how much drawing there was in biology I never would have done a degree in it!

 

Are you thinking of doing some kind of degree in biology? I did a BSc in biology and enjoyed it alot. I particularly enjoyed botany classes, which surprised me. There is alot of rote memorization especially in the early years of a bio degree, but that's neccessary in order to be able to understand the more interesting and complicated stuff.

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yeah, im considering a degree in it. I've only come across some videos yesterday http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Biology/7-012Fall-2004/VideoLectures/index.htm

and already from the initial two vids that I have watched so far, the field seems very attractive to me. I'm going to be watching all these vids to get a better idea of the field.

What do you mean by rote memorization?

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Bio is great. I was a bio major for nearly two years and loved it but found something else. You can't really do much with a baccalaureate degree in bio but a bio degree prepares you for so many graduate degrees. This can really give you lots of time to decide what you really want to do. Its really hard though.

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Also the possibility of animal experimentation. You need to decide how you will deal with it.

 

The degree is hard and from what I am familiar with there is a minor in chemistry or another physical science. You'll be really smart at the end.

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Animal testing is very easy to get around. Same goes for dissection. All I had to do was say that if I were a vegetarian from India they would never make me cut an animal open. This was a private school that folded for me. It would have been much easier at a public school since my school could have easily just said no.

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in high school it's really easy and fun... i didn't even studied and passed w/ a 112%... but i don't think it's going to be easy in college...

maybe you should try to talking to a prof. in the college that you wanna go to... just talk to them, and ask questions..

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What do you mean by rote memorization?

 

In the first year of my degree, the biology courses required alot of memorizing species names and especially identifying and labeling specimens. A typical biology lab test in first and second year of my program would have fifty or so stations set up around the lab, where you have two minutes to rotate between stations and answer questions, identify species, describe something, etc. It's a fun challenge but it can be tough if memorization isn't your thing.

 

As for animal testing I never had to do animals tests myself, and that should be fairly easy to avoid with good course selection or talking to the prof. Same with dissections. But I can almost guarantee that you'll still have to look at and memorize dissected animals, even if you didn't disect them yourself. At least at my program, that's just how they teach and test knowledge of animal anatomy.

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ah, i see.

I would think memorizing something that has a visual reference would be easy. I find it difficult to memorize things which dont have any visual reference, such as complex math problems.

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ah.

I could understand, for instance, physics where it has a visual correlation or description of what all the variables are expressing, but to visualize the actual opperations is hard for me i think.

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If the school you plan on going to have a good pre-med program you'll need to know tons of chemistry...more than you can imagine. This is because chemistry is so important in the medical profession when it comes to drugs as well as how certain chemicals in the body react with organs and visa versa. If the school has a bio program without a big pre med sytem then you may only need to take 3-4 chemistry classes. I would have needed 6 chemistry classes for my BS in bio at the school I went to and 4 of them were manditory...the other 2 would have been chemistry classes of my choice.

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hm, chemistry seems pretty important i guess from what i can concern.

I wasn't very good at it in highschool, but at that time I never really saw it as I see it now.

It amazes me how visual biology is and I'm surprised I haven't noticed this before. It is like i am rediscovering it or something.

Also the fact that I am incredibly interested with how life works, and believe I would find it really enjoyable looking down a microsope at little life forms in animation doing different things and knowing that by studying such tiny things can uncover new understandings of life itself.

Its like it is connecting two major areas of interest I have (art/visual&creative problem solving and the understanding of life for example consciousness). By the way, what kind of focus would there need to be if I wanted to study how consciousness worked, or try to discover how?

I've been wondering whether I could understand chemistry better, so i'll most likely attempt to find some resources in which I can learn some of it.

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Neuroscience/neurology is the best thing you can do for that but you may want to get a degree in Psychology too. They work together and you'll need both if you want credibility in the field. You may not need a PhD in Psych but you will need some degree, as for Neuro...nobody will listen to you unless you have a PhD.

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