BIOL 120-50 – Honors Integrative Biology
Honors Integrative Biology was definitely the hardest class I took first semester freshman year. It served as more of a wake up call than anything. I was expecting this class to be very similar to my AP Biology class in high school but it definitely was not. I don’t think this class was like a normal intro to Biology class. We focused heavily on certain topics while in my high school biology classes we glazed over everything. This class also forced me to talk, whereas in other classes I could just sit back and observe. I had to actually make connections and understand the topic so that I could answer the questions my professor was asking. This class was also different in that it did not have normal tests. We had essay tests where we took four or five questions and wrote long essays to answer them. This was a huge struggle for me at first. I didn’t know how you could answer a three sentence question in three or four pages so I definitely had to change my way of test taking for this class. As time went on, I acclimated to this way of test taking and was able to get better and better grades. To make this class more of an honors class, my professor wanted us to present at the honors poster session and the biology poster session at the end of the semester. This definitely scared me because I had never been to one of these poster sessions, let alone do an experiment for more than a week. Dr. Fortino allowed us to research, design, and execute our experiments within our groups and then make a poster reflecting what we had done the past semester. The poster sessions were very scary to say the least. I didn’t know what to expect, which was the main part of my fear, however this was changed as we finished the first session and went on to the second. I am very grateful that we had to go to those two poster sessions because it force me to get out of my comfort zone and do something I had never done before. Attached below is a picture of me and my group with our finished poster.
