Biology

I love science! I love learning about why the universe works the way it works. There is something perfect, pleasing, and beautiful about learning how God created everything. That said, I hate biology. Why? Because rather than dealing with the 'why' of creation, it deals with the 'what'.  What the names of bones are; what the respiratory system is; what photosynthesis does... All sorts of specific which, quite frankly, bore me stiff. I'd much rather study the science of dropping things (ie, physics) or the science of exploding things (ie, chemistry) rather than the science of living things...

Fortunately, for the most part, my biology class is tolerable. A sarcastic teacher who also prefers physics and chemistry helps. But because she's bored with the subject, she messes with the students, and yesterday was undoubtedly the worst science class I've ever had.

We started on animals yesterday. Previously, we'd covered botany, an interesting, enlightening, and thoroughly engrossing topic. Please tell me you get my sarcasm. The logical starting point is looking at invertebrates.

Because she had planned a dissection, the teacher only had a short lecture - fifteen minutes. She focused on stuff that interested her. So for the first five minutes, she gave an in-depth introduction to tape worms, complete with pictures, graphs, and all the biological impacts it has on the host. After that section, I was feeling kind of queasy, and desperately wishing that my grade didn't depend on my attendance of the class.

The teacher then announced that she'd spend the remnant of the lecture on spiders. In case you didn't know, I've got a case of arachnophobia.  For the next ten minutes, I looked anywhere but the slideshow, and by the end of the slide show, not only was I ready to lose my breakfast, but feeling thousands of crawling legs moving up my spine. It didn't help that the teacher was gesturing and pointing out things on the slides with the can of 14-inch-long worms that were about to be dissected. Basically, by the end of the lecture, I wanted to run screaming from the room.

Then the fun began. She called us to pick out our worm, and gave us dissecting kits. The worm on the tray in front of me looked like a scale model of the tape worms she had just told us about. My stomach gave a warning jump. However, since I was being graded, I picked up the scalpel and got to work. The only way I got through the intervening hour was by singing "The Gambler"'s chorus to myself.

See, I have a problem. When I read a book about someone experiencing pain, I start hurting too. That's one of the reasons I have problems with meat: I see the veins and I start hurting all over. And when I was cutting through the skin of the worm and pinning it back, it felt like I was peeling back the skin on my hand without anaesthetics and pinning it to the cardboard. And when it didn't feel like I was vivisecting myself, I felt sick because the worm was disgusting.

I felt sick for the entire day, and I am desperately praying that the next dissection falls on the week Regionals will be held. Because I don't know if I can even do it again.

Sickly yours,
B