Can someone explain to me the first four semesters of biology?

[vonburen]

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Finishing Ugrad and transitioning to medical school, I wanted to reflect on my experience of biology.

I was not a bio major, the only reason I took biology courses was for the fulfillment of the med school prereqs.

Bio I course went over
-Krebs Cycle
-Oxidative Phosphorylation
-Photosynthesis
-Proteins
-glycolysis
-cell cycle
-DNA replication, transcription, and translation
-meoisis
-Mendelian genetics
-evolution
-Basic principles of animal, plant, and prokaryotic cells
-viruses and retroviruses
-various forms of RNA
-inheritance patterns of genetic diseases

Bio II went over
-Proteins
-some anatomy
-some physiology
-mitosis
-meiosis
-Basic priniciples of animal, plant, and prokayotic cells (basically the same stuff)
-various forms of RNA
-evolution
-inheritance patterns of genetic diseases

Genetics went over
-DNA replication, transcription, and translation
-Proteins
-Mendelian genetics
-Mitosis
-Meosis
-Cell cycle
-Evolution
-various forms of RNA
-viruses and retroviruses
-inheritance patterns of genetic diseases

Biochemistry went over
-DNA replication, transcription, and translation
-Glycolysis
-Krebs cycle
-Oxidative phosphorylation
-Photosynthesis
-Proteins
-Genetics
-RNA stuff

Basically each semester of biology was just a repeat of biology I. I seriously feel like I just repeated Bio I four times.

I have just one question,

Why?

 

[Nissan GTR]

why not

 

[Loveless]

The material is best learned by repetition.

 

[CanIHazDopamine]

I feel like you never really learn biology until you take a Cell Bio course. That was where everything I learned in bio started to come together and make sense.

 

[Mt Kilimanjaro]

Sell mas textbooks.

 

[climbouthole]

I think that's true of most degrees. Courses provide greater and greater detail. I just finished the capper course molecular biology and we covered things like replication, recombination, transcription etc. Except this time we memorized all the protein names, gene sequences, and current theories on mechanisms. not really repetitive but increasingly specific. You're a college educated "biologist" now; a pseudo-expert.

 

[Doctor Strange]

The same topics are covered, sure, but the depth in which you go into the material is certainly not the same. Moreover, which details you focus on should change with each course, as well. If your four courses were truly all the same, then I'm sorry you wasted your money.

 

[chillaxbro]

Yeah I thought the same thing
I feel like I learned the same couple of things 6 times over
You relearn the same of things over and over again but you go into much more detail in certain classes

eg in my experience I learned about tumor viruses, cancer, protooncogenes, tumor supressor genes, etc in genetics, biochemistry, cell biology, and cancer biology (all separate upper division classes) but we went into much more detail in cancer bio - more pathways, treatments, methods of detection, epidemiology etc in my cancer biology

Basically more material and they expect you to know much more detail

It just shows you how interconnected everything in biology is pretty cool imo