7. Science is Ok

To an extent, you started preparing for college as soon as you began high school. A strong grade point average requires four years of work, and by junior year colleges have started directly marketing to you. Deciding where you want to go is tough, even though you have lots of time to think about it.

The mail slowly filters in, you visit several campuses, and at some point your big decision must be finalized. But the real work doesn’t start until your high school GPA is a statistic and your on-campus housing deposit is part of the University’s brick fund. Classes are the reason we call it “school,” so you cannot reasonably say you’re adjusted at college until you’ve adjusted to classes.

I was not looking forward to the general courses everyone has to take, and was slightly nervous about being in the honors program. I enrolled in University honors for the scholarship – not just for the sake of being a bigger nerd. I expected I’d handle honors classes alright, but didn’t know how much extra effort they would take.

I would have been really concerned, but the requirements for an honors diploma didn’t sound all that steep: by graduation I would need a good GPA and 10 honors courses under my belt. This meant if I wanted to start off at a good pace I would need two honors classes in my first semester schedule.

In addition, I would have to pass calculus to be admitted to the business school. I definitely wanted to get that over with, so I signed up despite a placement test score indicating I should take pre-calculus first. Boo to that…no way was I going to take more math than necessary when I’d gotten an A in high school precalc. The slower paced (and hopefully easier) version of calculus was a big five credit-hour class. I also had to take English 101, which left room for probably two more classes in my schedule.

Philosophy 111, “Knowledge of Deity, Morality, World,” was offered as an honors class and would also cover the University’s humanities requirement. I decided to register for it, which left me with five hours to fill. I saw few options – I needed another honors course but also needed a science, and the list of honors science classes was short. Further complication came with the realization that I needed a science that included a lab. Since I am no fan of labs, here was another requirement I wanted to cover as soon as possible.

Flipping through the honors packet for what seemed like the hundredth time, I found my solution. One of the two life-sciences listed sounded like it wouldn’t be too bad: a four hour course catalogued as microbiology /botany /zoology and described as “a general introduction to basic concepts of genetics, evolution, and the origin of species.”

Nice! A class that should be interesting, included a lab, and couldn’t be too rough – why else would they describe it as both “general” and “basic?” The course number was even in the low, comfortable 100s. I decided there was no way it could be a terribly difficult class, since it applied towards the requirements of three different science departments. I put MBZ 113.H into my schedule.

Ironically, school itself is one of my lesser worries when I first move in to school. The course load might be challenging, but my lecture schedule is great for a freshman. Tuesdays and Thursdays I will start at 9:30; Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays my first class isn’t until 11:00. With my first weekend on campus over, my books paid for, and my room starting to feel familiar, I am ready for a new year of reading and writing and ‘rithmetic (not the ‘rithmetic so much but there it is).

MBZ 113.H will be the first college class I attend. My first Monday begins at 9:30 when my alarm gets me awake and moving. I stumble to the bathroom, sandals on my feet and shower bucket in hand. Only once this weekend was the water cold, thanks to the girls upstairs...guess the old building had to adjust to residents again, just as we had to adjust to it. After my shower I go downstairs to the dining hall, and following breakfast it’s time to make the trek to class.

Fifteen minutes later I am in a lecture hall with 59 nervously chattering students. For some odd reason there are three old-ish people at the front of the room. Are all three of those people professors? What are two extra professors doing in my class? The kid next to me, who has already been here for a few minutes, reveals the truth – all three professors will be teaching MBZ 113.H. For a couple minutes, this makes no sense to me. Why more than one professor for a single course?

I think back to the description in the honors booklet, with slashes separating the words microbiology, botany, and zoology. Wait a minute! I bet each professor represents one of those departments… this cannot be good news. I doubt if there would be extra professors just hanging out here for no reason. It probably doesn’t take three professors to teach an easy class, does it? I don’t know…maybe it does…it’s probably nothing to get concerned over…

During this first lecture we fill out bubble sheets about our background, personal interests, and professional goals. Wednesday in class we’re shown an overhead displaying the survey’s results, and I see for the first time what is really going on here. Of the 60 students sitting in a halfway-crowded lecture hall, 50 plan to attend to medical school upon graduation from the University. Eight plan on law school or some other form of graduate education. If you are counting, you’ll notice that leaves me and one other poor sap who are just here for our bachelor’s degrees.

It comes to my attention that I’ve gotten myself into a pre-med weed-out course – the first and perhaps hardest in a long series that will separate the doctors from those who can’t hack it. This class isn’t so simple that it works as basic credit in any of three life science majors, but so universal that it is required for every major in those departments! Excellent. Well, I liked science back in sixth grade when it was about rainclouds and guppies. But I doubt if a pre-med class will be as approachable or exciting.

I don’t want to be a doctor. I don’t need a course that will prepare me for seven long years of intense scientific studies. I signed up for this class to fulfill my lab requisite and part of my science and honors requirements. I hoped to maybe learn something interesting, but did not count on a pre-med level of difficulty coming with the package.

And here I am, taking a course whose mere acronym strikes fear into the hearts of medical students campuswide. My classmates repeat the terror stories they’ve heard about MBZ; I was unfortunately left out of the loop. Somewhere my registration advisors are laughing that a poor little business kid is stuck in this harsh, stressful science course. They should be fired.

I could withdraw and try to take something else, but I like the class times in my schedule. I like being able to sleep until 9:30 three days a week (and still take my time eating breakfast), and any attempt to find an easier science now that classes have begun would more than likely be futile. I tell myself that this class will be no big deal, and may even be an enjoyable challenge for me.

I’m intelligent. I think, “maybe I can take it, maybe I’m as good at science as all these crazy neurosurgeon wannabes,” and you know what – that’s sort of how it turns out. I stay in the class, I learn some interesting stuff... and looking back, still am not sure how I did so well! Thank God for a brain that understands life science and for guiding my hand to the correct bubbles on those multiple-guess tests.

There was never homework to turn in for MBZ. We were handed a syllabus at the beginning of the semester, which the professors stuck to closely. For each lecture we received a reading assignment with a study guide that had several questions to help us pick out main points. But the reading was heavy, the book’s print seemed to shrink with each sentence, and it didn’t take long before I decided skimming would do.

Have you ever sat down and tried to read twenty pages from a college biology textbook? After a few lectures I was down to reading once a week, if at all. I paid attention in class and took good notes and understood most of the material without trouble. When there was a test looming, I would triple-read through my notes and force myself to at least scan the bold terms in the book.

By semester’s end my binder held a notebook half-full of lecture notes and definitions from the reading, six or eight completed study guides…and at least twice as many handouts I’d never so much as scribbled on. The topics we covered were interesting, our professors were cool, and I never skipped a lecture. Between paying attention to my teachers and reading the assignments periodically, I scored as well on tests as the average pre-med student. A bit of the material went over my head and I certainly failed my fair share of quizzes, but for the most part I was impressed by my performance in a notoriously difficult class.

The honors section professors were vital to my success. One of them was decent but not great, one was really good, and the third was a downright great teacher. The trio took turns with the lectures, teaching for a week or two at a time as the material shifted back and forth between departments. It was obvious that each of them had great experience in their field, liked students, and was excited about teaching. They made enjoyable what could have been an awful course.

What I appreciated most was the sense of humor present, especially in my botany professor. Two of the teachers were absent for a lecture following a test most of us had bombed. We’d been prepared for bad news the class before, but one middle-aged, doctorate-bearing scientist was stuck with the task of revealing the average score. He became victim to the honors students’ collective wrath, for a test he had only written a third of. For nearly the entire fifty-minute class, our professor paced the room cautiously, carrying a large wooden pointer as a sword.

When first he quietly revealed the average score of 62%, you’d have thought the building was on fire. It was probably the closest thing I’ve seen to a riot. The professor’s attempts to persuade everyone our grades would be curved failed to calm down many of the hyperventilating students. He seemed almost serious (and rightly so) about needing to defend himself. But, even the most uptight students loosened up when at one point he swatted a good-natured pointer-parry into some rude kid’s desk.

This was the best aspect of being in an honors section full of pre-med students: the opportunity to stress out and laugh with them. Seeing how obsessive the future doctors could become helped reveal the ridiculousness of my own worries. After several quizzes, I got used to the idea that I wouldn’t be getting an A. I didn’t mind not being the smartest kid in the class, and would have been content with a C.

In addition to stacking my deck with great professors and a reasonably capable brain, God blessed me with a good lab instructor (also “teacher’s assistant,” or “TA”). The lab that went along with the lecture portion of class was 2 hours a week, and my section met every Wednesday afternoon. Since the lecture was Monday-Wednesday-Friday, my Wednesdays for the whole semester contained nearly three hours of not-so-easy science.

Scott, my TA, helped each of us succeed; he explained every assignment in depth and oftentimes emailed us extra instructions to make sure we understood the out-of-class work. The activities were similar to the sort I was used to from high school, and most of them weren’t too difficult. I’m not very good at labs though, so it helped having a TA who graded more generously than he could have.

Lab was an annoyance – biking there at full speed after another calculus lecture went too long, leaving me with no time to spare. Trying not to ruin mixtures and calculations, and being surrounded by kids who thought I was stupid for bungling things up. As far back as I can remember, when I think of labs or science activities I recall getting them horribly wrong, regardless of whom I worked with.

I couldn’t tell you how many labs my high school groups had to redo because almost always, we recorded the worst results our teachers had ever seen. Luckily even I was incapable of wrecking the results in MBZ lab. More often than not, a more studious young man or woman was there to correct me before I melted something or killed our bacteria culture or printed our spreadsheet upside down. And, like the lecture, lab was nothing overwhelming.

Yes, MBZ turned out to be my favorite class first semester. Everyone laughed at me for staying in a pre-med weedout course, but many science topics still interest me and my professors were some of the best I’ve had at the University. The labs and tests were stressful but not impossible, and I miraculously did well without putting in as much work as I should have. Looking back, I would go far enough to say I liked MBZ. If only the same could be said for the rest of my first semester schedule…