Biology

These past few weeks I've been trolling through the annual coursework for Biology. I can't stand anything that's repetetive, call it a pet peeve of mine if you will. Anyway, this coursework demands that you justify why you're doing everything, but because I've already explained it all in my introduction, I have to write it all out again. Hand writing it out mind. I can understand coursework perhaps preparing you for research or something, but it seems like an awful lot of work for not many marks, and it doesn't interest me in the slightest. Anyway :)

I've always loved 'biology' - I put this in inverted commas because it's sort of a loose term. Let me explain.

I often get from people 'how can you like biology? it's so boring' which yes, I can understand perfectly well - you don't blow things up in biology, nor do you seem to ever have to explain something so abstract and complex that your head drops off thinking about it. I'll admit that there hasn't been a lesson in which I myself have been sitting there thinking 'god this is so boring' - I'd say that perhaps 5 out of 4 lessons of biology are boring.

The most fun other people seem to glean from the subject is 'cutting animals and stuff up' aka 'dissection'. I wouldn't say I dislike dissection, I do, but I never really learnt much from it save from that you get to see what organs and stuff feel like, and look like. You can't tell how they work from hacking it to pieces. Anyway, I was explaining what appealed to me...

The fact is, they never teach you the interesting parts of biology, or... they never go into enough detail about the few snippets that catch my attention in lessons. When learning about the nervous system for example, we did a measly five minutes on animal behavior - I'm sure people would have found that far more interesting than synapses and reflexes etc (retold in exactly the same amount of detail we had at GCSE). We did photosynthesis to death five times over amen jesus christ, but we haven't once touched upon the evolution of a pentadactyl limb. If I wrote the syllabus, everyone would take this subject :D

That's another thing, that I mentioned before - this subject is such a joke. I don't feel I'm learning anything new (perhaps it's due to the fact I read too much), we did it all at GCSE. I could probably go into detail about how the kidney works even though we haven't covered it yet in class, and I'll bet it's exactly what we need to know. *le sigh* Every other subject does new and exciting things - why doesn't Biology?

Anyway, for your interest and amusement, here are some things I think you should go read about. It's good, interesting biology;

http://hometown.aol.com/darwinpage/equid2t.gif Evolution of the horse (pretty picture!)

http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/whales/whales-graph.jpg Evolution of the whale (pretty picture!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark Go read about sharks 'yo.

http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/2.html#vissamp Ever wondered what the world looks like to colourblind people? Also on 'other' click the 'animal' link. Very interesting reading.

There I feel I may have enriched some people's knowledge.

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