Rockhound76
Contributor
my roomate graduated in marine bio the year before I was to finish. As I've posted before, his only two job offers were to count polychaetes in mobile bay or dead dolphins on a tuna boat. Instead of taking the jobs, he headed to grad school for a masters in environmental engineering.
I couldn't afford to stick around for a Ph.D., and a masters in marine bio seemed to be "stopping too soon." I went the geology and geophysics route on top of the marine science degree. I love what I do, and it's been very rewarding, but sometimes wish I'd stuck it out.
About organic chemistry: some schools with strong pre-med programs use these classes to weed out the wannabe's. I toughed it out, but both organic and p-chem were no picnic. For years, I had nightmares about all those 5x7 note cards I memorized for organic (as someone said, it's mostly rote memorization and I never used it again). I think my organicI class started with 200 students and finished with some small fraction of that number. Quant was even hard, but that was because some of the pre-med frat boys kept screwing with the other students (A students) labs, trying to get their grades scaled up.
The very toughest class I took was cell bio. I had the highest average in class going into the final, with a "C". My roomie had a "D". He took the bio dept. secretary out on a date and got the ACTUAL final a day early. He stayed up all night working on it. I refused to look.
After the test, I had a "D" and he managed to squeak a "C". Because we were on a 3.0 quality pt. system, my D was the same as an F in my major. I had to re-take it. Until that time, I had a 2.9/3.0. It sucked big time. I hated the arrogant prof, who refused to scale. I thought about filing a grievance, but decided it wasn't worth the effort.
I couldn't afford to stick around for a Ph.D., and a masters in marine bio seemed to be "stopping too soon." I went the geology and geophysics route on top of the marine science degree. I love what I do, and it's been very rewarding, but sometimes wish I'd stuck it out.
About organic chemistry: some schools with strong pre-med programs use these classes to weed out the wannabe's. I toughed it out, but both organic and p-chem were no picnic. For years, I had nightmares about all those 5x7 note cards I memorized for organic (as someone said, it's mostly rote memorization and I never used it again). I think my organicI class started with 200 students and finished with some small fraction of that number. Quant was even hard, but that was because some of the pre-med frat boys kept screwing with the other students (A students) labs, trying to get their grades scaled up.
The very toughest class I took was cell bio. I had the highest average in class going into the final, with a "C". My roomie had a "D". He took the bio dept. secretary out on a date and got the ACTUAL final a day early. He stayed up all night working on it. I refused to look.
After the test, I had a "D" and he managed to squeak a "C". Because we were on a 3.0 quality pt. system, my D was the same as an F in my major. I had to re-take it. Until that time, I had a 2.9/3.0. It sucked big time. I hated the arrogant prof, who refused to scale. I thought about filing a grievance, but decided it wasn't worth the effort.
