Hello everyone. My name is Brett Merritt. I am from Pittsburgh, PA, I love sports, but I don’t really like science. I have always had a slight interest in science, but that slight interest has always been wiped away by an annoying high school teacher. I chose to take this course because I heard good things about the professor and was hoping he could maximize that slight interest I mentioned before. I heard this class was interesting and much different than the normal science class where you remember the periodic table or do an experiment and get the “wrong” result. I wanted to take a course that was intriguing and taught the way science should be taught. So far, Andrew is doing an amazing job keeping my attention, and he has me genuinely interested in the material and the world of science. I know it’s still early, but my hopes for this class are being exceeded, and I hope that lasts through the semester.
Science is not my major for a number of reasons. The main reason is due to the previously mentioned annoying teachers growing up. They made me dislike science class by their teaching style. Instead of peaking interest in science, they would just teach what had to be taught for you to pass the test and get them the grades they need to look good among their peers. Another reason science is not my major is because I do not think like a scientist. I don’t have the patience to invest years into a project that most likely won’t yield the results you expect. I am interested in business. How to operate a business efficiently, how to cut costs, how to maximize profit. Those are the things I am interested in. And for that reason, I am in the Smeal College of Business majoring in Supply Chain and Information Systems. For those of you who may not know what Supply Chain is, you can click here for more information.
As I said before, I love sports. Being from Pittsburgh, I am very passionate about all Pittsburgh sports teams, especially the Steelers and Penguins. So I am going to leave this picture here because it makes me happy.
Pittsburgh Penguins center Sidney Crosby raises the Stanley Cup after Game 6 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Finals against the San Jose Sharks Sunday, June 12, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. The Pittsburgh Penguins won 3-1 to win the series 4-2. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
I agree with your view on science. I hated most if not all of my science teachers. They were all extremely boring and obviously showed that they had no interest in the topic they were teaching. I am also thinking about majoring in business and maybe even Supply Chain but I still have not decided. Is there any deciding factor that made you know that you definitely wanted to end up in Supply Chain? One of my close friends is a senior here at Penn State and she will be graduating with a degree in Supply Chain. Over the summer she had an internship at PECO Exelon, an energy company based in Philadelphia, and she absolutely loved it and is excited to be working there next summer. Surprisingly, this class has managed to keep my interest the whole way through as well and time went by a lot faster than my previous classes that I am taking.
Hey Brett, my name is Sal. I can definitely relate to your dislike of science from poor teachers in the past. I have also seemed to have bad luck with science teachers, a couple of them were actually fired while they were teaching my class. I think it’s a shame that someone’s bad teaching style can completely turn a student off to the subject, especially if they have an underlying interest in it. The link below is of one of my favorite youtube channels that makes high quality videos explaining various different science phenomenons and theories. I like to watch these videos in my free time because I find them insightful and pleasing to watch and I think you might to.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt
Hello Brett my name is Cole I saw you open the blog with talking about sports and figured this was the right person to read into. Besides that going down your blog I quickly learned I take many of the same stances as you do. Having boring teachers and learning irrelevant things in “normal science classes” also made me want to disassociate my self with the subject. We have similar blog posts and to feed into this ideal of false belief about science and how this came to be I found this article “On why People Do Not Like Science, Especially Physics” by Antariksh Yatra: https://vandanasingh.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/on-why-people-don’t-like-science-especially-physics/. I know what you are thinking, “no way I’m reading this science article this is probably so boring” but it really isn’t. You could probably read it in two minutes and this guy has no filler to waste your time so it is pretty clean cut and to the point. He just talks about what me, you, and probably the whole class would relate to as our common beliefs about science, how it is wrong, and why we think like that.
Hey Cole. I’m glad our love of sports helps us relate. I skimmed that article you linked and the author shared our ideas which was very interesting. Thanks for the comment!