Worst Class You Took for a Biology Major

[CDarwin]

What were, for you, the hardest classes you took in the pursuit of your biology/bioscience-typed major? Now this is probably going to differ wildly between individuals and between different schools, but I'm just curious if any general patterns emerge.

[jimmydasaint]

I would reply without doubt Cell Bology, but then I am speaking from the perspective of a British first Science degree. It was a fresh and rapidly changing science then and we had a professor who would sit in tutorials and wander off for a couple of hours telling us stories about his life and work and then pull us back on to topic in the last ten minutes. We also had to dredge through papers written on subjects that were controversial at the time such as phospholipid flip-flop and the phosphatidyl inisitol systems and thoughts about how facilitated diffusion occurred. Yet, thinking back on it I still remember the main parts of the course today. My title should really change from Quark to Old Fossil but ah....golden days, golden days!

[ecoli]

biochem, but I still have to take cell bio next year.

[Dak]

immunology was difficult... all the different inter-connecting aspects that you can't really understand untill you understand the other bits (which you can't understand untill you savvy the other bits)... yum!

[MedGen]

Well I've not finished my degree yet (just finished 2nd year, heading for a first hopefully), but epidemiology, bloody horrible. Every single graph and data set has to be statistically analysed, then you have to interpret it all using socioecomic factors, age of cases, etc. Such ball ache for nothing. Don't get me wrong, I understand the use and importance of epidemiological studies, but I really will be sticking to the molecular biosciences.

[Lalachicki]

The worst class for me was Organic Chemistry!! lol

Edited July 3, 2008 by Dak
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[cellbioS]

The worst class for me was Organic Chemistry!! lol

 

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I concur!

[ecoli]

nah... organic chem was a cakewalk compared the biochem.

[MedGen]

Thankfully haven't had the pleasure of organic chem, biochem however wasn't that hard surely, compared to cell signalling especially.

[ecoli]

Thankfully haven't had the pleasure of organic chem, biochem however wasn't that hard surely, compared to cell signalling especially.

I haven't taken, and don't have to take, cell signaling. However, biochem and cell bio are the two hardest classes at my school (for bio + biochem majors).

 

Granted, I probably could've worked harder in my biochem classes, but they were still crazy difficult.

[blike]

Biochemistry by a long shot. MedGen, how did you take biochem without organic chemistry? At my university, organic chem 1&2 are prerequisites for biochemistry -- and if I recall correctly they were used in biochemistry. Biochemistry made organic chemistry look like child's play

[CDarwin]

I don't have to take biochemistry, thankfully. I do have to take organic chemistry and cell biology, though.

[MedGen]

Biochemistry by a long shot. MedGen, how did you take biochem without organic chemistry? At my university, organic chem 1&2 are prerequisites for biochemistry -- and if I recall correctly they were used in biochemistry. Biochemistry made organic chemistry look like child's play

 

Luck? The pure biochemists and medical biochemists had to cover organic chem and analytical chem, thankfully biochem was sufficient for our purposes of the last two years. I think a certain amount of assumed knowledge from A-levels (16-18) is taken into account. I probably could have benefited from some organic chem lectures though because I left college 6 years ago.

 

I honestly found that biochemistry came fairly naturally, even the basics of enzyme kinetics we covered this years wasn't too bad.

[Genecks]

I'll bite.

No offense, but offense.

I think you guys are lame.

 

The worst classes for me were the ones that didn't relate the the major.

Simply anything that wasn't really science, unlike chemistry, physics, biology, and math.

I did enjoy philosophy classes, though.

 

I didn't go to school take a single social science course. Nor do I ever care to think much about the social sciences. I didn't care for the humanities, arts, or being subjected to learning 4 semester of the Spanish language (which I now know very well but hate; and me thinks it an aesthetically unpleasing language unlike nihongo).

 

Going to school to be a liberal artist was not my original intention. My intention was to be a biology major with knowledge of many science topics.

 

I don't care about art or the humanities. I like studying the Japanese language. I like studying computer science. I like studying a variety of the topics I was forced to take before I took them. Hence, I felt like I was mentally raped and my time stolen away because of silly crap, such as psychology, US history, arts of the western world, etc...

 

I understood them well when I came. I've aced just about every course I've taken so far that doesn't relate to my major.

Hence, I already understood the material.

 

Furtherhence, sitting in those classes for 50 minutes at a time was a serious yawn, bore, and should have been against the Geneva convention. Seriously unethical.

 

Yeah, I'm a proponent of technical vocation. I've told my professors how I feel about America and its curriculum. I tell them I think things are archaic and just a way to get money from people. They think I'm a prick. Eh.

Edited July 29, 2008 by Genecks

[Entropy]

Second semester calculus based physics. E&M beat me up pretty bad. I'm better at it now, but at the time it was not pretty.

 

I'll bite.

No offense, but offense.

I think you guys are lame.

 

The worst classes for me were the ones that didn't relate the the major.

Simply anything that wasn't really science, unlike chemistry, physics, biology, and math.

I did enjoy philosophy classes, though.

 

I didn't go to school take a single social science course. Nor do I ever care to think much about the social sciences. I didn't care for the humanities, arts, or being subjected to learning 4 semester of the Spanish language (which I now know very well but hate; and me thinks it an aesthetically unpleasing language unlike nihongo).

 

Going to school to be a liberal artist was not my original intention. My intention was to be a biology major with knowledge of many science topics.

 

I don't care about art or the humanities. I like studying the Japanese language. I like studying computer science. I like studying a variety of the topics I was forced to take before I took them. Hence, I felt like I was mentally raped and my time stolen away because of silly crap, such as psychology, US history, arts of the western world, etc...

 

I understood them well when I came. I've aced just about every course I've taken so far that doesn't relate to my major.

Hence, I already understood the material.

 

Furtherhence, sitting in those classes for 50 minutes at a time was a serious yawn, bore, and should have been against the Geneva convention. Seriously unethical.

 

Yeah, I'm a proponent of technical vocation. I've told my professors how I feel about America and its curriculum. I tell them I think things are archaic and just a way to get money from people. They think I'm a prick. Eh.

 

Interesting perspective and not at all uncommon. There were times when I was sitting in college (undergrad) and I to loathed my time there. Fortunately, time brings perspective, and those classes are rather useful, as in most cases in the outside world you will deal with non-science people.

 

Those classes provide insight to other fields and how those perceive the world around them, which is valuable when communicating with them.

 

The world is larger then just science, and one of the important things about science is being able to communicate it to the rest of the world.

 

Of course, if you have no interest in communicating with non-scientists, by all means, stay the course.

[mrsemmapeel]

Biophysical chemistry has definitely been the most difficult so far for me, too much maths! I enjoyed microbiology but the exam was harder than i expected

[jeffy87]

Has to be a tie between Eukaryotic Molecular Biology and my advanced Biochemistry classes. The former was hard because my professor taught the course like a grad school class. (About 25% of the students in the class were grad students.) The latter was hard because the classes were a rigorous mix of both memorization (chemical structures, names, functions, etc.) and critical thinking (more experimental and lab-based questions).

[chitrangda]

my organic chemistry classes!

[TheDonner]

I am in biochemistry right now as an undergraduate. it seems harder then all of my previous courses combined. Its seems like a mix between Cell Biology and Organic Chemistry...

[Riogho]

Organic Chemistry in my school started out with 300 and by the end of the semester was down to about 75. Not all of those people passed.