Is it ok to not like biology?

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flyingdonut

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As a biomedical engineering major, I get a good mix of both life and physical sciences. Lately, I've noticed that the biology parts of my coursework just bore me death, although I really enjoy it when its presented through a chemical, physical, or quantitative perspective. Unfortunately, from what I hear, medical school curricula don't really have much of the latter.

I know that choosing a career in medicine should involve more than just considering how much you enjoy science, but I'm having a really hard time imagining myself spending four years memorizing tomes of facts that I just don't find interesting. Has anyone felt the same way? How have/are you dealt/dealing with these questions?
 
To answer the question posed in the thread title:

If you were pursuing a doctorate in biology [instead of medicine], then, yes, this may be a problem.
However, as it stands, no, not really a problem.
 
Yes..I understand where you're coming from...I have a math background too and sometimes it just gets annoying to memorize completely irrelevant facts and numbers that one could easily look off a table...

One of the medical students MS IV I was talking to said that you need to memorize a lot of stuff but to get the big picture you have to know those tiny details but by the end of med school no one remembers those tiny details you just need to understand the key concepts BUT to grasp that concept in the first place you need to know the tiny intricate details...
 
I would keep in mind, however, that if you dislike biology, you may dislike first two years of medical school since that's when you have to learn TONS of biology.

It's OK to not like taking biology courses as individual's professors and coursework may negatively influence them. But, you should still have interest in the subject.
 
I'm glad I'm done with Organismal. 👍
 
As a biomedical engineering major, I get a good mix of both life and physical sciences. Lately, I've noticed that the biology parts of my coursework just bore me death, although I really enjoy it when its presented through a chemical, physical, or quantitative perspective. Unfortunately, from what I hear, medical school curricula don't really have much of the latter.

I know that choosing a career in medicine should involve more than just considering how much you enjoy science, but I'm having a really hard time imagining myself spending four years memorizing tomes of facts that I just don't find interesting. Has anyone felt the same way? How have/are you dealt/dealing with these questions?


I don't love biology, but I have figured out why. It's because it's not intuitive to me. So, I'm adding a few biology courses (no-premed) to my schedule this year. Fun biology courses like: Biological Perspectives on HIV and Aids, Contemporary Problems in the Life Sciences, and Human Evolution. I'm going with immersion. I seriously believe that once I have a better understanding of the field, that it'll free up some brain space for enjoying the material 🙂
 
As a biomedical engineering major, I get a good mix of both life and physical sciences. Lately, I've noticed that the biology parts of my coursework just bore me death, although I really enjoy it when its presented through a chemical, physical, or quantitative perspective. Unfortunately, from what I hear, medical school curricula don't really have much of the latter.

I know that choosing a career in medicine should involve more than just considering how much you enjoy science, but I'm having a really hard time imagining myself spending four years memorizing tomes of facts that I just don't find interesting. Has anyone felt the same way? How have/are you dealt/dealing with these questions?

yea i hear u you, i also have a bme background and I used to think it's impossible to learn things like pharmacokinetics/dynamics, hemodynamics et al without knowing calculus, diff eq, transport eq. etc but i guess u can qualitatively with some idealized/simplified steady state equations.

Med school for the most part, means death to math (except some biostatistics) and you will memorize a ton of stuff and most things will be learned at a qualitative level. I'm a M1 so I can't speak for M2 stuff..
 
OP, remember that you are an engineering major not a biology major. The way material is taught and understood is not the same in each discipline, you may really end up enjoying some of the more qualitative aspects of biology that engineering can sometimes lack
 
I hate a lot of bio classes (zoology, botany [grrrr....], etc...), but there are some that I loved (anatomy, animal development, physiology...). I find that I like the ones that are related more to medicine and also the ones that incorporate chemistry. I love learning about pathways Lol.
 
I hate a lot of bio classes (zoology, botany [grrrr....], etc...), but there are some that I loved (anatomy, animal development, physiology...). I find that I like the ones that are related more to medicine and also the ones that incorporate chemistry. I love learning about pathways Lol.

I really enjoy botany.... not so much. 😡
 
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