Now it’s time for me to introduce you to the last course I took in my first trimester of High School. This was the biology 1 course and was the last class I took every day. Just like before, let’s start by discussing why I chose it over all else. Well, like most Asians, I took it because it was the harder widely available path. The range of science courses a freshman can take isn’t as diverse as math in my opinion but it’s certainly still full of different options depending on what you want to take. Here are all of the separate paths you can take:
- Biology 1 and Biology 2 – This two trimester commitment is widely considered to be the easiest choice for most people. In math, this would be the equivalent of doing Integrated 1a and 1b. For some reason, the kids doing Biology 1 and Biology 2 don’t get bullied as much as they would doing 1a and 1b.
- Biology 1, Chemistry 1, and Chemistry 2 – This is the equivalent of an advanced science course. Everyone who wants to be “better” usually takes these courses. There is a notable drawback to this course and that is that even if you skip Biology 2 now, you’ll still have to go back and do it later on in order to get credit. Some people actually get their science credit by taking AP Biology instead. Another weakness to this path can be the fact that it’s so popular— so many people take this course that sometimes the school can’t accommodate everyone doing it in that exact order. In other words, you might get stuck doing Chem-Bio-Chem instead of Bio-Chem-Chem. From what I’ve heard and seen from my own experiences, it’s lucky if you have Biology first because you’ll learn a lot of chemistry in that class which helps you out later on. I chose this path and was one of the lucky ones who got to learned biology first. Along with that, I learned all of the biochemistry material that Chem 1 is built off.
- Principles of Biomedical Science – This one’s a bit trivial since not a lot of people do it or have opinions on it, but I heard it’s a good stepping stone if you want to get in the medical field. I also know someone at my school who is doing this along with Chem. (This is sort of a special case and rarely happens.)
- AP Biology or AP Chemistry in Freshman year – Any sophomore taking this class won’t be special (No offense if you’re a sophomore and you’re reading this) but freshmen who take this path are basically seen as gods. AP Biology is quite difficult and I only know one person who took it in freshman year. AP Chemistry is a little more popular but from what I’ve heard it’s also hard. I haven’t talked to a single person who hasn’t struggled in AP Chemistry…
Okay, now let’s discuss the curriculum. The first unit of Biology went over all the chemistry stuff that biology is built off of. A lot of the chemistry that I’m learning in my real chem class had some relation to what I learned in bio, so it’s a great thing that I got Bio 1 done first.
If you’re reading this and go to my school, you might be thinking: Uh… my first unit in Bio 1 was ecology. Are you sure you remember it correctly?
My response to that would be: Yes, I do remember it correctly. I just asked my friend for confirmation as I’m writing this. I’ll save some words for the Chem 1 article (well, that won’t be coming out for a loooong time) but in general we learned about the structure of the atom and the subatomic particles, such as protons and neutrons. We also covered bonding between atoms. The unit then transitioned into the topics of macromolecules. If you’re unfamiliar with macromolecules, they’re molecules made generally out of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Phosphorus. There are four types: Carbohydrates, Proteins, Fats, and Nucleic Acids. Carbohydrates and Fats are generally broken down to become energy. Proteins are typically used to make Nucleic acids, but can also be broken down into energy in times of crisis.
The second unit covered cell theory. It involves a lot of memorization, particularly memorization on the different parts of the cell and how they function. A lot of these different parts of the cell would become prominent when we reached the third unit, the Energy Unit. This unit talks about how various organisms get their energy. Plants, the bottoms of the food chain, get their energy from the sun and are the only organisms that can get energy from non organic matter. Animals only get energy due to these plants. In other words, if there’s no plant life, the food chain collapses. The unit placed a large emphasis on the process of how plants get their energy, which is better recognized by the word Photosynthesis.
Lastly, we talked about ecology. Ecology is a very interesting topic to me and in this class it was probably the one I enjoyed the most. It might be because it involves interactions between species and organisms, maybe it’s just humanities combined with science— whatever the case, it was really interesting and fun to learn about. The unit started with discussions about how energy moves through an ecosystem and then it talked about interactions between species. We also had to do two presentations which might be the best projects I’ve done in high school yet. The first one talked about species and their interactions with each other in a certain biome around the world. The second one talked about human impact on the resources and nature in a country that we got to pick.
Now that the curriculum is out of the way, let’s talk about grading and projects. Like in previous articles, this can really differ between teachers. In fact, my Biology teacher is sort of an outlier compared with the rest of the biology community at my school. Most biology teachers focus solely on one field— that is, all of their classes are usually the options of Regular and AP Biology, but not mine. Instead, my teacher does one class of regular Biology… and four classes with AP Physics. Interesting, I know. Doing this alone is already very impressive, but when I learned that he taught regular chemistry as well, I nearly exploded. All three fields of science? Can anyone else at my school do that?!
A large part of the learning we did in class was based off lectures and note taking. A couple times a week (A bit more or less often depending on the status) we would take out our notebooks and write what we needed to down. There were lots of labs reflected off what we learned in the lectures which was also fun to do. Most of those labs included a paper we needed to write about the data in that lab. Most of the time we’d come to a stable conclusion by writing a paragraph or answering questions about our thoughts after the lab. We also had quite a few presentations, as I mentioned before. Despite making all these slideshows, many people (including myself) never got to actually share them with the class. He moved around and handpicked a few different slideshows for the person to present to the class. My biome presentation never made it to the front of the classroom. It’s possible my country presentation would have… but I was absent that day. Lastly, there were the tests of the class. We took one test at the end of each unit with multiple choice questions based on the material we went over. In the later part of each test there was a chart of data or some other resource that we had to analyze in order to come with written responses to the question.
In conclusion, Biology 1 is a great starting class if you’re interested in life science, the medical field, the ecology field, becoming a biology teacher, being a surgeon, working in a lab, and much more.