First year sucked. Second year sucked even more. Now I'm in third year. Before I begin my little spazz on absolutely nothing important, I have to point out that I am not procrastinating at this moment, but simply taking a break from my History of Evolutionary Biology course.
I remember going into first year, taking the BIO150 course and ended up being very disappointed, not only because of my mark but because of the content taught. They taught us clouds and winds, soil and plants, rocks and animal habitat. The 101 course for biology in university should be HUMAN biology not WORLD biology. The content taught was dry and boring, I completely lost interest. The profs that taught the course were from the EEB department, the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I swore to never take a course in that department.
How smart of me, eh? I learn from my mistakes. I took a road, didn't really like it, and never went on it again.
I stuck to the HMB department, human biology department. Why, you ask? Because that's what I've always loved my entire life. Please, when I was 8, I read books on the human digestive tract. No joking! I didn't fare too well in my second year courses. I figured it was because I didn't study hard enough or the profs were just in a terribly bad mood when writing the test questions.
Of course, the former and the latter, I'm sure, did play a big part in my failure in second year as I refused to admit that my level of interest had nothing to do with it. I LOVEd HUMAN BIOLOGY. I LOVEd PSYCHOLOGY.
It wasn't until this year, I went to the HMB department for some counselling and they pointed out reasons why I wasn't doing so well then everything made sense. I knew what I wanted to study, but I was, in fact, in the wrong program. At that time, I was doing a major in Cell & Systems biology and a major in Neuroscience and a minor in Physiology.
Sure, those majors are from the HMB department... BUT... the courses required for the program were not my field of interest. I didn't like studying tiny invisible molecules or mixing God-knows-what substance with each other for a mere colour change. I had absolutely no interest in learning about how alpha, beta, gamma motifs made up proteins. Proteins are about as small as I'm willing to go in terms of size and depth, but we were learning THINGS THAT MADE UP PROTEINS, AND THINGS THAT MADE UP THE THINGS THAT MADE PROTEINS! WHAT?!
Call me shallow, but I refuse to dive into such depth of knowledge because it was absolutely useless. Not useless to the world of science but useless to me. It didn't satisfy my need to see the big picture. It didn't satisfy my need to learn the human body and behaviour.
So I switched programs. I kept my neuroscience major only, not because I wanted to, but because I've wasted too much time on it to give up on it now. I'll simply just throw it onto my list of challenges I have to overcome. I can't have everything I want in life. I am now a Behaviour specialist. Scary, I know. The word specialist gives me a burden because anyone who is a "specialist" in science almost equates the Holy Jesus.
I thought it would take a while for me to "settle down" and take in the new program. I mean, my classes have completely re-allocated from the Con Hall area to the Robarts area. It feels much closer to home, no pun intended. Little did I know that I am simply in love with all my courses this year. These courses do feel like a lot more work but I can actually, pretty much, stay awake in all my classes in which most of them are back to back. I haven't been to the labs yet and I have a feeling they're going to be completely different. The last 2 years my labs were always indoors, with a white lab coat and goggles. This year, most of my labs are either outdoors, where I collect my data, or in a computer lab, where I do statistic analysis on the data I've collected. I don't know if this is what I want yet. I have my labs tomorrow.
Hopefully, all goes well so I can say that I absolutely ADORE my new programs and that I have no regrets on such a big move in the middle of my undergraduate years.
As for my minor, I've jumped from Physiology to East Asian Studies. I'm not focused on completing a minor, I hope I can finish it but if I can't, it's not the end of the world. A specialist and a major is all I need to graduate with a Honours Bachelor of Science.
