The worst class you'll ever take...

[BerkeleyPremed]

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My schedule for this semester included a class called Integrative Biology 175-Herpetology. I knew that it was the systematic study of amphibians and reptiles and I figured it would be a survey course that would focus on the comparitive anatomy and physiology of organisms within these two taxa. However...I was wrong...this class is such an amazing waste of life.

The class revolves around guessing evolutionary relationships (using cladistics) based on VERY OBSCURE morphological traits. For example, the students are expected to memorize the different placements of the maxilla, prevomer, parasphenoid, and other small bones in different families of reptiles...such as Proteidae, Plethodontidae, Cryptobranchidae, etc. After you're done memorizing those, you need to know how those traits are linked to particular families and you need to be able to distinguish between the families.

The class doesn't even have a textbook and uses a Field Guide on Reptiles and Amphibians for its laboratory. The lab practicals are going to have preserved skeletons and replicas of reptile skeletons and a full structure (limb, head, etc) would be placed under the microscope and something would point to a bone and you'd have to name that bone, say which family that specimen is from, and you may even have to draw a cladogram using your knowledge of how that bone was derived (homology, analogy/convergent evolution, etc).

Let me just say that I'm VERY glad to drop this class. Has anyone else ever taken this class/had a class that was equally as bad??? If so, how did you guys survive? The lectures for this course would immediately put me to sleep...sort of like taking Unisom pills.

 

[BerkeleyPremed]

Has anyone here taken Herpetology or its ugly cousin...comparitive vertebrate anatomy?

 

[ForensicPath]

Originally posted by BerkeleyPremed
Has anyone here taken Herpetology or its ugly cousin...comparitive vertebrate anatomy?

I took comparative vertebrate anatomy. I found the evolutionary stuff interesting, but the rest of the course was tedious.

 

[Amy B]

Yikes, Good luck getting through this class. I had friends take comparative Vert and they hated it. I was smart and took Embryology😀

 

[BerkeleyPremed]

I'm gonna get out of the class and either sign up for a graduate level course on Neuroanatomy or an upper division course called "Physiology of the Aging Process." However, I'm not sure if I can handle the following schedule:

Neuroanatomy (graduate level) (2 units)
Neuroanatomy lab (6 hours/week) (2 units)
Human Physiology (3 units)
Evolutionary Biogeography (4 units)
Public Policy (4 units)

 

[Brickhouse]

You can do whatever you put your mind to! 😀

 

[Tiki]

Just mentioning the word cladistics makes me seriously ill. 🙁

 

[Selisa]

i guess people's experiences with anatomy courses vary from school to school.

i enjoyed my comparative vertebrate anatomy class. we had a bit of evolution mixed into our lectures - which were really laid back since the prof. was pretty cool - and we got to spend an afternoon at the American Musuem of Natural History - i love that place!

our labs...dissection after dissection after dissection. we started with eels and by the end of the semester we were dissecting cats <--- that REALLY freaked out my boyfriend. yeah, you go home smelling like formaldehye at the end of the day, but you get used to it. 😀

 

[carrigallen]

herpestology? o.0 seems like it could be useful for physical exams

 

[BerkeleyPremed]

Herpetology is the WORST class you'll ever take. Trust me...

 

[boomuntilnoon]

🙂

 

[Nutmeg]

Originally posted by BerkeleyPremed
I'm gonna get out of the class and either sign up for a graduate level course on Neuroanatomy or an upper division course called "Physiology of the Aging Process." However, I'm not sure if I can handle the following schedule:

Neuroanatomy (graduate level) (2 units)
Neuroanatomy lab (6 hours/week) (2 units)
Human Physiology (3 units)
Evolutionary Biogeography (4 units)
Public Policy (4 units)

Why in the sweet name of my Lord and personal saviour Jesus Christ Almighty would you take a graduate level course in neuroanatomy? If you really hate yourself and like pain, you can take MCB 163 in the fall, and I guarantee you you'll feel like you might as well have just taken herpetology.

I know that you would rather study then do the nasty on a friday night, but neuroanatomy is just needless suffering at the undergrad level and completely foolish at the graduate level.

 

[Nanon]

Originally posted by Nutmeg
Why in the sweet name of my Lord and personal saviour Jesus Christ Almighty would you take a graduate level course in neuroanatomy? If you really hate yourself and like pain, you can take MCB 163 in the fall, and I guarantee you you'll feel like you might as well have just taken herpetology.

Haha! Aint that the truth! And if you really enjoy the path of pain, take 160 with it! 😀

Nanon

 

[Alli Cat]

Originally posted by BerkeleyPremed

The class revolves around guessing evolutionary relationships (using cladistics) based on VERY OBSCURE morphological traits. For example, the students are expected to memorize the different placements of the maxilla, prevomer, parasphenoid, and other small bones in different families of reptiles...such as Proteidae, Plethodontidae, Cryptobranchidae, etc. After you're done memorizing those, you need to know how those traits are linked to particular families and you need to be able to distinguish between the families.

You know what this reminds me of? Bio 1B. That class was so excruciating (although if there's a God it's changed since I took it back in 1999). There's a better way to determine cladistics, and it involves a genome and gene alignment software.

~Alli

 

[Nutmeg]

Originally posted by Nanon
Haha! Aint that the truth! And if you really enjoy the path of pain, take 160 with it! 😀

Nanon

I'm in 160 right now. Is it really that bad? 😕 I can't imagine it being on par with 163. I'm expecting something like 140 or 130.

 

[Nanon]

Originally posted by Nutmeg
I'm in 160 right now. Is it really that bad? 😕 I can't imagine it being on par with 163. I'm expecting something like 140 or 130.

No, not that bad, but with 163 it would be brutal overkill. And keep in mind, I took 160 with no second semester physics, and having not taken 163, and I had a lot going on in my life at the time. It's not too horrible, it just can take a lot of your time... lots of memorization of enzymatic pathways and such later on.

Have fun with it!

Nanon

 

[R_C_Hutchinson]

physical biochemistry. all that you loved about biochem with a sprinklin of P-chem for flavor, yum

 

[mattorama]

Originally posted by Nutmeg
Why in the sweet name of my Lord and personal saviour Jesus Christ Almighty would you take a graduate level course in neuroanatomy? If you really hate yourself and like pain, you can take MCB 163 in the fall, and I guarantee you you'll feel like you might as well have just taken herpetology.

I know that you would rather study then do the nasty on a friday night, but neuroanatomy is just needless suffering at the undergrad level and completely foolish at the graduate level.

I took a grad lvl neuroanatomy class two summers ago and loved it...sure, looking at countless stained cross-sections of the brain (especially brainstem/midbrain) was a little tedious, but overall pretty cool. We did a lot of clinical correlation in it and I am really looking forward to taking it in med school (I could very well have the same professor).

 

[BerkeleyPremed]

Originally posted by Nutmeg
Why in the sweet name of my Lord and personal saviour Jesus Christ Almighty would you take a graduate level course in neuroanatomy? If you really hate yourself and like pain, you can take MCB 163 in the fall, and I guarantee you you'll feel like you might as well have just taken herpetology.

I know that you would rather study then do the nasty on a friday night, but neuroanatomy is just needless suffering at the undergrad level and completely foolish at the graduate level.

lol...Nutmeg, your responses will always make me laugh. I completely understand what you're saying man...neuroanatomy would seem like unnecessary suffering. However, I decided to major in Integrative Biology instead of Molecular Biology and for the major..I need 2 upper division courses with labs (most of the IB upper div labs are 6 hours/week). All of the other lab courses are full right now and they're in topics I would not enjoy studying (like herpetology, Introduction to California Plant Life, Ecosystems of California, etc). I saw that there was space in Neuroanatomy and that would be a lab that would actually be tolerable (dissecting and examining brain tissue seems more interesting than looking at the Premaxilla bone of a random reptile...then trying to figure out which species it is, which family it belongs to, and how that premaxilla was derived from ancestral stock).

In addition, the same professor who is teaching the grad level neuroanatomy class is also teaching IB-131 (Human Anatomy) in the fall...a class I plan to take. Taking the class now will also give me a good feel for the professor's lecturing style and method of examination...which will probably help out in the fall. As of right now, I'm enrolled in
IB 132-Human Physiology
IB 166-Evolutionary Biogeography
a public policy course
and IB 245L-Neuroanatomy lab

P.S.: IB 140-Human Reproduction (taught by Dr. Tom Carlson) was cancelled for the semester. This ****ed over ~150+ students out of 4 units of upper div IB they could've used for graduation...so people were scrambling to get into other IB upper divs. I was also enrolled in the course...then realized I needed to find another IB class to substitute...🙄

 

[Nutmeg]

I can honestly say I'd rather explore cladistics of reptilian evolution than learn to differentiate the nucleus ambiguous from the red nucleus.

But then, I don't want to go to med school, so my opinion holds no weight for you. The only good thing about neuroanatomy was that it brought me to understand how MISERABLE med school will make me. I'm glad that God made people who can deal with the tedium ad nauseum, because I friggin' HATE THAT CRAP.

"Class, I want you to remember a tedious bunch of vocabulary. The words are those which are important to neuroanatomy. You will not be provided a list of words to know. The names and definitions may or may not be in any of these five huge books. Some books use different names for the same thing, and some are going to give you a different definition than the one I'll expect you to use on the test. You may feel free to forget all this crap three seconds after you turn in your final."

God, I'd rather get unnecessary dental surgery.

 

[BerkeleyPremed]

I might just have to take the lab this semester and hold off on the lecture for neuroanatomy until next spring. Depends on how intense the class is.

 

[drlexygoat]

Hands down, analytical chem. Oh god, the horror.

 

[TheFlash]

P.chem was the most harrowing academic experience in my life. It's been the only college class in which I never felt prepared for any of the tests, even after n hours of studying. Fortunately I was only required to take one semester for my chem minor. Whenever I drink, I pour out beer for my poor friends in p.chem II.

tf

 

[hapkidochic]

Dr Diamond (IB 131, IB 245) rocks!! I've known a few undergrads to take graduate neuroanatomy. BerkeleyPremed, If she teaches 245 the same way that she teaches 131 (i took 131), it'll be a fun, informative and not terribly difficult class.

 

[drlexygoat]

Forgot to add Biochem II to the list on my last post. WHY on EARTH did I need to memorize every single structure of the TCA cycle? Yeah, that'll help me in medicine for sure.

 

[Childe]

Originally posted by BerkeleyPremed
My schedule for this semester included a class called Integrative Biology 175-Herpetology. I knew that it was the systematic study of amphibians and reptiles and I figured it would be a survey course that would focus on the comparitive anatomy and physiology of organisms within these two taxa. However...I was wrong...this class is such an amazing waste of life.

The class revolves around guessing evolutionary relationships (using cladistics) based on VERY OBSCURE morphological traits. For example, the students are expected to memorize the different placements of the maxilla, prevomer, parasphenoid, and other small bones in different families of reptiles...such as Proteidae, Plethodontidae, Cryptobranchidae, etc. After you're done memorizing those, you need to know how those traits are linked to particular families and you need to be able to distinguish between the families.

The class doesn't even have a textbook and uses a Field Guide on Reptiles and Amphibians for its laboratory. The lab practicals are going to have preserved skeletons and replicas of reptile skeletons and a full structure (limb, head, etc) would be placed under the microscope and something would point to a bone and you'd have to name that bone, say which family that specimen is from, and you may even have to draw a cladogram using your knowledge of how that bone was derived (homology, analogy/convergent evolution, etc).

Let me just say that I'm VERY glad to drop this class. Has anyone else ever taken this class/had a class that was equally as bad??? If so, how did you guys survive? The lectures for this course would immediately put me to sleep...sort of like taking Unisom pills.

I would shoot myself i think.

 

[dr.hamdy]

i am new member
i am a dental student in the 1st year in cairo university in Eygpt

 

[tacrum43]

i am new member
i am a dental student in the 1st year in cairo university in Eygpt

Well...that was certainly random.

 

[AppleseedCast]

Tacrum, your icon is awesome!

 

[tacrum43]

Tacrum, your icon is awesome!

🙂 Thanks. It's just an echidna, doing its thing.

 

[Flopotomist]

why was the OP banned? This post doesn't seem that bad...

 

[tacrum43]

why was the OP banned? This post doesn't seem that bad...

The banning was probably from another thread. Also, this thread is from 2 years ago. I think the guy from Egypt got a little confused.

 

[masterMood]

i am new member
i am a dental student in the 1st year in cairo university in Eygpt

lol wtf?

 

[Philo]

I have not taken any really hard courses yet, but I feel that Real Analysis next term is going to give me nightmares. The most boring class by far is Phil. 201 Ancient Philosophy. Anyone who has had to read Aristotle's five part theory of causes without sleeping knows what I'm talking about.

 

[novawildcat]

I have not taken any really hard courses yet, but I feel that Real Analysis next term is going to give me nightmares. The most boring class by far is Phil. 201 Ancient Philosophy. Anyone who has had to read Aristotle's five part theory of causes without sleeping knows what I'm talking about.

Ahhh real analysis... that is where they separate the men from the boys. trust me when i say this-- you have no idea what a limit, derivative, or integral are yet.

 

[Elastase]

Damn mayn. I really considered taking that class while I was at Berkeley...I am a huge herp fan. I'm glad I didn't now though..

 

[Mister Pie]

This physics circuits lab was the worst class I've ever taken. Basically, you're stuck in lab from 1-5 PM multiple afternoons (usually 3) in a given week, plus 3 hours of lecture. There were also incredibly long lab reports to write-up every two weeks.

And it only counted for 3 units! (At the university I go to, this is a huge discrepancy in class hours vs units).

 

[Will Ferrell]

i am new member
i am a dental student in the 1st year in cairo university in Eygpt

It's the beginning of a new era.