My Biology Class

As some of you may know, I am taking a class about Australia's environment. The textbook for this class is one of the few texts I have read that actually HELPS you understand the topic. In fact, the book is so good, that I barely see the point of going to class at all. There is literally everything that we learn in lecture all nicely laid out in this book. How fabulous.

This means, that on days when I am feeling less than inclined to go to class, I can take the book out to a bench my the lake on campus and read in the sunshine for an hour. This is what I did yesterday, and I am convinced that I learned about three times as much teaching myself than I would have by going to lecture.

I might mention that the class itself would be much more informative if it weren't full of people who neglect the textbook entirely. You see, this is a biology class, and although it's not a first year biology class, you apparently don't need to have an understanding of basic biology to get in. In fact, judging by my classmates, this is the class to take if you failed highschool biology. The amount of people in this class who don't know how cells work, and don't know what stomata are is simply astounding. Why on Earth would someone sign up for a class that they have no foundation for? I mean, you WILL have an examination on it. That will happen. And if you don't understand the basics, how can you expect yourself to understand the covered topics enough to explain them later?

It is beyond me. This same classmate issue also means that the lecture itself has to be brought down to a painfully simple level. However, now I have had a good review on what kinds of soils there are, how we determine if something is living, what carbon dating is, etc. Not that the review was strictly necessary. But I got it anyway. The big highlight of this class is that near my birthday they are taking us all to the Australia Zoo. I am SO STOKED.