The Science of Life

This post will be predominately geared towards two groups of people; those who are presently in college or those who are looking to go to college. I have the people that have been in my study groups in chemistry, math, and physics in mind, but this applies to everyone going to college. With all degree programs, there are two important mentalities to have while going through with it: You have to have insatiable curiosity for the subject, and you have to love the subject. Without these two frames of thought, you will make your academic and professional careers a living nightmare. The vast majority of the students in all of my classes – this semester and in every semester for the past couple of years – have not had the curiosity required to be actually successful in these classes. Now let me stop here to explain what I mean by successful. In my mind, successful is more than merely the grade, though don't get me wrong; the grade is a part of it. A bigger part of success in ...

In the past few days, I had to switch classes. I had to drop Biology, but I have picked up Biochemistry to take its place, which is vital to my degree program. I bring this up because, seeing as how I want to have parallels between this blog and what I am learning in academia with an emphasis on the chemical, I view this as a more chemical outlook on biology, which is logical, seeing as how the name of the course is “Biochemistry”. With that in mind, let me begin with the meat of the blog. For those of you pre-medical students reading this blog who are taking organic chemistry and wondering why you need to take organic chemistry, this blog entry is one of many examples of why pre-meds need chemistry. There are also reasons why you should take physics, but that will be for future blog entries. All of us are made of chemicals. Stomach acid is a mixture of acids which are used for reacting with the food and drink we consume, to produce compounds which our intestines c...

I had a thought earlier this week. I have my final paper in my Hazardous Materials class due tomorrow, which is we are supposed to pick one of five prepared questionnaires to answer in full essay form. In order to save some time in writing this weeks blog, I figured I would put a public version of it on here for this week. For next week, I will do something similar for my Hazardous Materials Final Exam. (It's an online class, and I will have the final exam submitted prior to posting next weeks blog, so there will be no moral quandaries with me posting my final exam on this blog.) I would like everyone who reads this blog to perform this personal assignment. If you wish to post your copy of it in the comments or not is up to your discretion, as is sharing it with anyone in your realm of existence. But I do ask that you do it so that you may think more intimately about your at-home materials and your use of them. As with the lab note-book I spent the past two weeks writing ab...