About Biology

I'm not liking it as much as chemistry. I guess it's inevitable. Chemistry is like, well, using a simile here, my first love. It was the first specific science I'd even gotten into since coming from Canada (where we have clumped sciences until junior year), and it was the first science I'd really, really tried to study. Not to mention I've met some amazing chem teachers along the way (three of our school's most famed teachers, around arena anyway, and in the positive way).

Last year I loved honors chem and thought there'd be nothing better than a continuation of that. This year I went into AP chem, with Mr. Coffee, and I loved loved loved it, even though some areas were shaky for me (and frustratingly, not for Bryant, but that's to be expected). So far I haven't had anything I really hated about chem, not even acids and bases, not even electrochem, not even equations, which felt like rote memorization.

Physics is like that popular, scandalous guy you've always heard of, and you can't believe your luck that he's actually chosen you. My dad's a physics major (albeit chemical and mechanical physics, and my mom and her father are both chemists), and he's always been talking about physics, ever since, well, I started science, probably. Physics is the thing that makes everything else makes sense. I feel like I'm supposed to love it, because it's something so wonderful and so mysterious, and even though I do love it very much and I love making sense of it, I sometimes wonder if it's because of its reputation as much as its mysteriousness.

Doesn't help that when I'm making some "breakthrough" discovery in my physics class, someone else would say, "What is he talking about?"

So what about biology?

Biology is the, uh, rebound guy. Now that I can't possibly take more chemistry classes in high school anymore (although I could try TAing, but I don't know how that will work), I'm kind of in a rut. I want more science classes (I want more math classes too, but, let's face it, I have even less options in math and multi's about the only thing I can take now). Biology's my opportunity to break out and love take a science class again (aside from AP physics).

There's a reason why nobody wants to be that rebound guy. For one, every time I stare into my bio book (granted, the first unit's called "The Chemical Basis of Life") I keep on thinking, "Hey, that's chemistry!" or "That's sooooo easy. Basic chem stuff, duh." And I'm kind of frustrated, because it's not the advanced chem material I'm used to, but I can't skip it either because every now and then there are fancy words I don't know and concepts that aren't explained fully chemically because they're too complex for a high school textbook.

I have to remind myself, this isn't chemistry, this is biology, and I've got to take a step back and reorient myself. I have to remind myself that my first love's really, really gone (at least for now) and I've got to either love the rebound guy (which I will, as soon as I get over this "I don't really want to work now" period) or I've got to reconsider why I'm stuck with him.

Moral of the story: biology is not chemistry, try as I might to think it is. I will have to deal with that.