4th Column: Yer a Wizard, Harry
Amanda Finnell, Tower Staff
December 2, 2011
Filed under Uncategorized
I love being a biology nerd but one of the downsides to my major is that I am constantly surrounded by bacteria that can cause some serious damage. Do Salmonella, Strep, and E. coli sound yummy? And that’s just to name a few! But, despite this minor detail, I also have to write lab reports – TONS OF LAB REPORTS! They never end. But it’s not the writing of the reports that bothers me; it’s the fact that I’m constantly explaining why nothing worked. The professor may ask, “Why did you not get a colony of bacteria to grow on this Petri dish?” My response, “The characteristics of the bacteria were not conducive to the properties of the media and therefore, growth did not occur.” But I was really thinking, “I HAVE NO CLUE. I’m just going to come up with a sentence that sounds scientific…” Words to the wise, the sooner you accept that your experiment is never going to work, the easier your life will be. You may be the Chosen One to have results that deserve a shiny gold star but remember, us mere mortals down here will forever wonder how on Earth you did that!
I know it’s strange that I would be going off about bacteria now, but it is precisely for this reason that I am so excited to be a part of Page Two! I can write my own thoughts, explain why things work instead of explaining what went wrong, make a joke, tell a story, I can even use first person narrative!! I feel like Harry Potter when he got his letter from Hogwarts. There’s a whole new world beyond biology and its full of magical things like elective courses, walks to a distant land known as O’Boyle, and classes that have attendance as participation. You can get points for just showing up?! Strange.
As I come to terms with all of this and escape the failure that is my biology experiments, I would like to make a promise. My name is Amanda Finnell, and as editor of Page Two, I vow to NEVER mention bacteria, culture media, or “human error” again. I’m not a politician, so I mean it when I say it’s a promise. Look out! The biologist is on the loose! (And she’s wearing open-toed shoes without goggles and gloves).
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