The Study of Life by Taylor

The Study of Life by Taylor - August 2017 Scholarship Essay

“What is biology?” This was the single question written on the board of my ninth-grade biology class. I wracked my brain, but quickly realized that I had no idea. Just a few short weeks later I was telling everyone that biology was my favorite subject and that I hoped to study it when I entered university. Something about biology immediately drew me in. Learning about the microscopic workings of living creatures fascinated me. Understanding the genetic foundation of human differences, or the mechanisms behind our bodily functions, made me feel like maybe this world was not so complicated after all. Therefore, if I were to be a college professor, I would without hesitation teach biology.
At my university, as with many other universities in the United States, biology is largely a subject people major in when they are planning on pursuing a career in the medical field after graduation. As a biology major hoping to attend medical school when I graduate, I completely understand this. However, because of this trend, there is not as much of a focus learning usable skills for the laboratory as there should be in biology course. As a biology professor, I would focus my curriculum on real life research, experimental design, and laboratory techniques that have been used to make some of the most important discoveries in human history. My students would read and discuss current research articles, which is a great way to stay up to date with both the achievements and the dilemmas of the field. This will be a huge advantage to students planning on working in laboratories after graduation, along with pre-health students who want to stay up to date with the medical field.
Additionally, I have found that biology courses at my school tend to focus too much on examinations. The students around me cram facts into their heads for one test, and then forget the information as fast as they learned it once the exam is over. A good way to fix this is to assign more essays and short answer questions in place of exams. This way the students will not just memorize facts, they will have to apply what they have learned to real life situations. Some prompts may be for the students to critique various laboratory techniques, or to analyze a current debate in a sub-field of biology. I believe that having these written assignments in addition to a few tests will greatly deepen the students’ knowledge of the subject area. I have found this to be personally true for me when I took my own biology class that required an essay.
Overall, I believe that being a biology professor would be a very rewarding career path for me. Not only would I be able to talk all day long about my favorite school subject, but I would be able to hopefully make a change in the way college level biology is taught. Hopefully as a biology professor I would be able to instill a love of the subject into many students who may have originally questioned the subject’s utility.