Environmental Physiology This class is about how animals physiologically deal with their environments. So far I haven't really learned anything new yet. It's sort of like an intro to biology class mixed with a physiology class, both of which I've taken. But I like my teacher, Dr. Grafton. He gives good notes, lets us out of class early every day, studies monkeys in South America, and once stepped on a Fer-de-lance
Writing Intensive I'm taking this course along with Environmental Physiology. It's just a one credit hour course that I think is a University requirement to graduate. I have to write a 15-20 page research paper on any topic I choose as long as it deals with the class. As of now my topic is sex change in protogynous fish. Exciting, huh?
Organic Evolution This class is supposed to be about...evolution. So far it's been a class about politics and "what science really is". I find this class incredibly boring. All we do is take pages and pages of notes. My teacher, Dr. Hoeh, refuses to put notes online for us because "students won't come to class" if he does. I really don't learn anything while I'm physically in the class because I'm too busy copying six pages of notes off overheads. He also hands back our exams for us to keep, which means that 75% of the class have their friend's exams from last year, and he knows it! I think you can tell I'm not enjoying this class very much. It is in the Liquid Crystal building though, and the seats are super comfortable.
Wetland Ecology and Management Speaking of seats, this class has to be in the most uncomfortable class in the world. Luckily Ferenc teaches this class, so it's worth it. This is the first biology class that I've ever felt very unknowledgeable in. There are only about 12 students, and they're all super smart and have taken every plant course the school offers (a major part of the course deals with wetland flora). The only botany course I've ever taken was back in high school, so when we're out in the field identifying plants, I feel totally lost. Also, about half the students are grad students. The lab for this course is fantastic, we go on a field trip almost every lab. We all pile into a van and Ferenc drives us away to places like Triangle Lake Bog, and we walk around and identify plants, take soil samples, etc. It's great. The only bad thing about this course is the crazy insane project we have to do. Well, I think it's crazy at least. We have to find a wetland, collect and mount one plant specimen of every plant species in our wetland, make a list of all plant and animal taxa, fill out classification and delineation forms, and write a report! I've been having major problems with the crazy insane project so far, maybe I'll write about it later.
I started a wetlands set on Flickr that I'll be putting photos from our field trips in. Now you can finally see photos of Ferenc and photos of the fun stuff we do, like taking soil samples.
Japanese 1 Ahh, a foreign language class that I actually enjoy. I thought this class was going to be really hard, but it's really just a lot of work. We're learning to write all the Hiragana and Katakana syllables, and we should be learning some Kanji towards the end. It's really just like learning how to read and write again, with a different alphabet that that has 92+ syllables and thousands of characters. I'm really glad I dropped Spanish last year because Japanese is about a million times more interesting.
