Hello! My name is Taylor Rodrigues and I am from Monroe, CT. I am currently a freshman at University Park and I am studying Broadcast Journalism. Throughout high school, science was not my best subject but it definitely was not my worst. I favored subjects like Biology and Earth Science rather than more mathematical subjects like Physics or Chemistry. I actually signed up for SC 200 at my NSO because it went with my schedule. Initially I wanted to take a Biology class, however my advisor suggested not to take it unless i was Pre-med. Since I am aiming more of my classes towards the English field, and I needed a science General Education course, my advisor recommended this course especially when I told her science was not my best subject. This course is perfect for me because it allows you to think critically and actually develop a respect for science, even if you don’t like it.
When I first walked into this class I definitely liked how it was a big lecture hall because I work well with lectures and just listening to the professor. I also liked how Andrew allows us to ask or text any question we want since he stated how “No question is too stupid.” I also was fond of how he stated that we have to think and use our minds in this course and if we can’t do that why are we here. Andrew said that there are many students that wanted to take this class and they were not able to so definitely this class is worthwhile and I realized I was lucky to get a seat in this class. Even looking through the schedule for SC200, there are a lot of distinct and interesting topics to cover. For example, one topic that I definitely will be fond of is the zombie virus one since I used to watch a lot of The Walking Dead. I cannot wait to explore these new topics and actually think about each one.
One topic that I thought was pretty interesting for the longest time was genetics. I liked to learn about eye color, hair color and pretty much the basic stuff. I found an article on CNN that explains how a coffee habit can be genetic and since I work at a Dunkin Donuts back home, I thought this article would be definitely interesting. (Sometimes we get customers that come in at least 4 times a day just for coffee). I also feel like a lot of college students would want to know about this since many students have 8 or 9 AM classes and many students stay up all night studying for exams.
(I know I’m not a science major but this picture was pretty funny)
This class is a great opportunity for kids who don’t really excel in science to further their knowledge on everyday topics like “catching obesity” or “vaccines.” This world is filled with so much science and there are so many topics to discover, some are interesting and some are not. I believe that this class will help me respect the subject of science like how I respect the subject of English or Journalism.