Ask Dr. Ross
"Ask Dr. Ross" answers the important and nagging questions parents and potential college students raise about higher education. Topics include preparing for college, avoiding student debt, and secrets to good grades. Hosted by award-winning professor Catherine Ross, Ph.D., and student producer Ashley Worley, listeners can ask their own questions by emailing ADRquestions@gmail.com.
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Ask Dr. Ross
What's it Like to Be a Biology Major? Inside the College of Arts and Sciences Part 2
As one of the hard sciences, Biology tends to be more concrete in our imaginations. White lab coats. Microscopes. The mitochondria (it's the powerhouse of the cell). But what about snake-trapping? Fishing? Counting frog calls?
The field is a lot wider than we might think.
This week, Dr. Ross and student producer Ashley Worley continue their series highlighting inside stories and college prep practicalities from UT Tyler's Biology department. Department chair Dr. Lance Williams and Biology student MJ Baker join the discussion to share what's really happening in biology and chemistry classes, from fieldwork to lab reports. If you're choosing your degree, preparing for college life, or just curious about other experiences in higher ed, this series is for you.
Have more questions about life inside a Biology department? Email us at ADRquestions@gmail.com or leave a comment below. We'd love to hear from you!
Want to learn more or connect with UT Tyler's Department of Biology? Click the link below!
-Department webpage: https://www.uttyler.edu/academics/colleges-schools/arts-sciences/departments/biology/
So, as you all have probably figured out, one of the goals of this podcast is to educate folks about what goes on at universities. And the central college in most universities was the College of Arts and Sciences.
SPEAKER_03:For this series, we're going to be introducing each of our wonderful departments in the College of Arts and Sciences by bringing you a top professor in that department and one of the top students as well. We hope that this is very helpful to you as you're choosing your major or just wanting to learn more about what to expect from college life in general. Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy.
SPEAKER_02:Well, so we're really excited to have our two guests today. We have Dr. Lance Williams and MJ Baker from the Department of Biology at UT Tyler. Tell us a little bit about where you were trained and how you got to UT Tyler, and then we'll ask you a little bit about what you teach.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Okay. I started as a biology major at the University of Oklahoma. It was a zoology major, actually. And my sophomore year, my wife and I took a class with a professor that turns out was a really big name in fish ecology, and we didn't really know that at the time. And then his graduate student invited us to go to take a summer class at a field station. And that PhD student hired Marsha and I to work for him when he was doing his dissertation work. And then that PhD student encouraged me to do my master's at Oklahoma State with one of his committee members where he did his master's. And so I went to Oklahoma State and did my master's with uh Dr. Tony E. Kelly, also a really well-known fish evolutionary biologist, probably at that time the world's expert on pupfish in the desert. I didn't work on desert pupfish, I worked on leopard arters, which was an endangered species that was in southeastern Oklahoma and southwestern Arkansas. So that was my first experience doing real research on fish species in the wild.
SPEAKER_02:So the thing that hooked you was the field work and the research part of it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. At a bigger school like OU, a lot of undergrads don't get to do research. I was really lucky. And I think you could say the same at UT Austin, but at UT Tyler, because we're a smaller program, it is a lot more opportunity for undergraduates to do research. I try to find students early on, and I I was telling MJ before we walked over here, when I hire somebody, I try to keep them the entire time that they're in school. Because I can teach them things. MJ's gonna get to go to a conference in August and give a presentation at the National American Fishery Society conference, which is a pretty big deal.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's incredible.
SPEAKER_00:So then interesting story that PhD student that I worked for at OU, he was in a brand new assistant professor at Mississippi State University. And I was finishing my master's and I was in New Orleans at a conference, and I was telling him I was applying to PhD programs, and I told him who I was applying to work with, and he said, Yeah, yeah, those are good people. Why don't you come work with me instead? He had just gotten a grant, and so that person was very instrumental in my career. If you can't tell, I mean I worked for him as an undergrad. He sent me to do my master's and I did my PhD with him. Still a very good friend of mine to this day.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you know, that's such an important part of higher education, and I think also of smaller schools where you get to know people and it there's a kind of a network. So MJ Baker, tell us a little bit about yourself. How long have you been at UT Tyler and how'd you get interested in studying biology?
SPEAKER_01:I started at UT Tyler three years ago, and I'm now getting into my senior semester, which will be next semester, so I would graduate in December, and I decided to go into biology basically because I knew I loved science, I was good at it, and grew up on a farm, so I really liked biology-centered stuff. Didn't really know which pathway I wanted to go on, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a veterinarian or biologist or um medicine, but I was more geared to medicine and I have done all of that pre-rex and now I'm here in Dr. Williams' lab doing research with him, which has been really fun.
SPEAKER_02:So, what is the research project you're working on with Dr. Williams?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell So I actually do two. One is working with macroinvertebrates, which is just a fancy word for water bugs. Well, the ones I do are water bugs. Also, I help out on a graduate student's project right now that works with invasive Australian red claw crayfish. So I do kind of both of those.
SPEAKER_02:Before we get too fancy into all this research stuff, we want to talk a little bit about what do you teach? What are the typical courses that a student will take who wants to be a biology major?
SPEAKER_00:I'm the department chair, so I don't teach as much as I used to. The main course I teach for undergraduates is biogeography. That's where I first met MJ, it was last fall. And biogeography is an elective course in biology. I've also taught ecology. I have taught aquatic biology. Those were the main courses that I taught. I've taught freshman biology. And then I, for fun a few years ago, the Board of Regents, they changed up the core curriculum. One of the things that came out of it was the course Biology and Popular Culture. It's a class I teach for honor students. It is for non-biology majors, non-STEM majors. So it we cover the biological concepts, but we try to put it into the popular culture construct.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Ross Powell So you study about what zombies and we've done a little bit of zombies.
SPEAKER_00:Virulent diseases or we've read the Lorax, a variety of different media.
SPEAKER_02:So if a student's coming from high school, what would they take? What would they study their first year as a biology major?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell So with a first year as a biology major, you really concentrated in science. You're going to take biology one and two, chemistry one and two, and math. Mostly that. Because we require calculus. So most students take pre-calculus and calculus. That's most of your first year. It's not like a junior college for some degrees where you do a lot of basics in your first year. You don't have much room in your first year because it's important to get those courses in and stem because they're they sequence. So for example, for chemistry, we require biochemistry, which means you have to take chemistry one, chemistry two, organic one, organic two, then biochemistry. So you have five semesters of chemistry and they have to be sequenced that way. So if you get off one semester, it can throw your whole degree plan off.
SPEAKER_02:MJ, have you found that that's an important thing is staying in lockstep with that sequencing?
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah. And it saved me a lot of issues down the road because I did that. I went ahead and got those out of the way. But you do see students that come in and maybe they took some dual credit or something along those lines in high school and coming in is kind of weird. It's splotchy for them. And I was really lucky to not have that problem.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell So sometimes the dual credit courses that they take in high school are out of the sequence?
SPEAKER_00:Dual credit's fine. I mean I don't have a problem with dual credit if it's done well. I've seen it done really well. The problem you often get, a couple of problems. One, sometimes students are just not ready yet for college at 16 years old, especially in STEM and math areas. So parts of the brain haven't quite developed enough potentially. And I've had students come with a lot of dual credit with a really low GPA telling me they want to get into medical school. And it's heartbreaking to have to tell them you've got 60 hours and you have a 2.0, you only have 60 more hours to get to a 3.5, you're gonna have to make an A in every single class that you take from now on. A lot of kids aren't old enough to understand the ramifications of the grades that they're gonna make and how those college grades are gonna carry on with them for potentially the rest of their career.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell So your advice for someone who's really a serious science student to think about holding off on taking some of their science when they get to the four-year college.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and and don't burn up all of your core classes either, because it's nice to have a core class to pad those semesters where you have a lot of hard science classes with labs. The problem we often see when students come in core complete or from a junior college is that I have to tell them all you have left to take is science classes with labs, pretty much. I mean school a lot because labs are three hours for one credit.
SPEAKER_02:That's right. So a regular biology class is a biology class with lecture and conversation and plus three hours of lab a week. So that's a heavy duty. Now, when you graduate with a biology degree, do you have more than the usual 120 hours?
SPEAKER_00:No, you can do it in 120 if you follow the plan, but students often deviate. You know, the other problem you see with dual credit is a lot of self-advising. And that is a problem for our own undergraduates, little yet a high school student. And so one common mistake that students make is they'll take anatomy and physiology. The sophomore level course, it's pretty common for dual credit. That is a course is specific for nursing majors. We don't accept it in biology. It doesn't count for credit. It's a non-majors course for us. We teach it and our students can take it, but it doesn't count towards the degree. And so that's eight hours of courses, you know, two three-hour lectures and then two labs.
SPEAKER_02:If I'm understanding you right, then a person who wants to be a doctor, a vet, a pharmacist, a dentist needs to be thinking very carefully about what they take before they get to the four-year college and be aware that the level of difficulty that a pre-professional degree is looking for is way on up there.
SPEAKER_00:And we don't offer labs online. All of our labs are face-to-face. I'm a fisheries biologist. I I can't I I mean I could take YouTube videos of myself sampling in a stream, but that's not the same thing as holding the fish in your hand and identifying it.
SPEAKER_02:Well, yesterday I was walking down in front of the building here and I saw two of your students wearing rubber boots and carrying some sort of big old cages of some sort of stuff. So what are you gonna go out and trap today? Snakes, they said. And I went, oh boy. Who teaches her patology these days?
SPEAKER_00:My wife, Marsha.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. How do you teach a biology class? What goes on in a biology class?
SPEAKER_00:You know, every person does it a little bit differently. We're all very hands-on, first of all, in biology. You kind of have to be in the sciences. But lecture styles are different by people. You know, my wife puts a lot of slides up and is real clear about what her expectations are. I have another professor that's a bit more Socratic, so he expects that students are going to have read the assignment before they come to class, and he wants to have discussions in class, and they should have already read the material. I kind of teach by telling stories.
SPEAKER_02:And the stories are fun, aren't they? What's it like to be in class? What what's the day like for a student in biology?
SPEAKER_01:Well, it really varies because like Dr. Linz was saying was that like every professor in the biology department is going to teach differently. So, you know, you can go to one class where Dr. Williams has his shoes off, is walking on a table telling some story of how this is relevant and it's fun and you know, a little different. And then, like you said, you can switch over to microbiology, which is a really traditional, you know, slides-on, taking notes type of class. So it varies, but overall, be ready to take notes. That's something huge in biology. When you get in the upper level biology courses, I've gotten to where I'd actually rather type my notes. It's a little bit faster for me, and we cover a lot of content very quick. Even in Dr. Williams' class, even in Dr. Yu, who teaches microbiology, and in any of those, it's a little bit easier. But when I took Gen Bio, I did take really good notes and I wrote them down. I just realized my energy was better put to typing rather than writing everything after I got to a certain point.
SPEAKER_02:You know, it's interesting that researchers on how we learn have said that the taking of notes by hand rather than typing them tends to give you a little bit more depth of exposure to the ideas because you can't write as fast as you can type. You have to sort through and kind of think about it a little bit more. And so there's a little bit deeper level of processing. But anyway, it's a little thing I like to mention is that note-taking is a really important skill. What do you like about a class in biology, MJ?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, well, I just like real things. Like I love to learn about living things. I think most of my favorite classes, if they have anything to do with evolution, I love to know why things are the way they are. And in biology, almost every class you talk about is gonna have some aspect of evolution in it. I like applicable things. It's very applicable because it's so relatable. It's just you walk outside, there's biology. That's why I like it.
SPEAKER_02:I've got to tell our audience that this young woman is beaming as she's saying this, and that I just looked over at her teacher and her teacher's grinning too. So it it is a joyful study, isn't it? Dr. Williams, tell us a little bit about the skills that a student in the sciences needs to have.
SPEAKER_00:So lab skills are incredibly important. That's also why online labs are a bad idea, because those skills build, right? So you're learning to pipet, you're learning to do those things in general biology. Then when you get into cell biology and genetics, we're going to expect that you know how to pipet, and you're gonna have to learn to identify organisms. A lot of what MJ is doing in my lab is identifying little bitty caddysfly larvae. And it takes tremendous skill, detail to be able to do that, to count hairs on the legs of a tiny insect larvae.
SPEAKER_02:And you do that under a microscope, I assume?
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah. Well, I mean, to an extent, you can look at them. They're all very different colors, all kinds of stuff going on with them. But yeah, for the actual identification, it's very tedious. It's looking under a microscope, having a headache all day, you know, that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_02:So it's not always just really fun playing with living things. Sometimes it's a little slow and tedious, huh?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. The field work's a lot of fun. You're gonna go out and get the hands-on stuff, but most of I would say the dirty work happens in the lab when you bring everything back and you have to identify it and you know, see what's actually going on.
SPEAKER_02:So let's see, lab skills are important.
SPEAKER_00:We talked about note-taking. That's incredibly important. You know, as a physician, you need to live a lot, we have a lot of pre-med students, you need to be able to listen to your patients, take good notes, and understand and and be able to process, think, and and you know they want to know what's wrong. And so it takes a lot of skill to be able to diagnose some condition that a person has. It takes listening skills, it takes writing skills, it takes lab skills many times. So it takes all the the skills that we teach are applicable to whether you become a scientist or a medical doctor or a dentist, you're gonna use all of those tedious skills. You don't think cleaning teeth is tedious? It's very tedious to clean someone's teeth. And the research is different. You know, my research, I usually discourage students, honestly, at first from doing research with me because it's very hard. I'm an aquatic biologist. We are terrestrial animals. So for us to sample things in water is difficult, requires expensive, heavy equipment. The project MJ's working on, we have to haul around traps. We usually bring around a hundred traps. These traps are pretty big, and we have to bring them in a trailer and loaded with tans of sardines and hot dogs, and we have to bait them, we have to check them. It's long days.
SPEAKER_02:Do you have ideas about what you want to do professionally, MJ?
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah. I I've thought about it a while, and I know going into my last semester, which is next semester, I've narrowed it down. I'm going to go ahead and get a master's degree in something to do with biology. I kind of had a feeling that I would want to do that no matter where my life went way on in the future.
SPEAKER_02:You're not done yet, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm not done yet.
SPEAKER_02:You're in your almost in your senior year and you still want to keep going.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. So I think like next step-wise, I'll do my master's degree. I'm probably going to be going somewhere else. Not sure yet. I have, you know, been reaching out, doing the normal preparing for finding a grad school to go to. And then after that, I don't know what I want to do for sure. I might go ahead and get my PhD. I might go to medical school. I'm not sure yet. And you know, we are in a busy world that tells you you should know what you want to do very quickly, but I don't.
SPEAKER_02:I just Well, I will just tell you that's okay. You know, most of us at like Dr. Williams and I will tell you that that's part of the joy of going to college is finding out what you care about and not being sure. I think it's important, as you said, to plan your studies carefully. So if you do plan to go to medical school, you've got the courses in the right sequence and you got the grade point average necessary. But you sound like you're a person who's very intellectually engaged in what you do and you find it interesting. I'm sure Dr. Williams says the same thing to you that I'm gonna say is just keep on enjoying the studies and follow what your brain and your heart tell you about it. It's a terrible thing to get out with a degree and having to do a job that you don't really enjoy. You know? I mean look at this guy, how much fun does he have?
SPEAKER_00:I have a funny story how MJ came to work for me. So I was in biogeography last year, and I do my usual spiel where I say you should get involved in research, which I feel very strongly about. Any undergraduate you should get involved in research, but I usually say you probably don't want to do research with me because it's very hard, requires a lot of heavy lifting, long, tedious days in the field, walking around in swamps. In waiters with alligators, and you know, not for everybody. MJ came up after class and she said, I grew up on a farm and I broke horses. I think I could work for you. And I said, Okay, why don't you volunteer in my lab? And see if you like it. And see if you like it. And so she volunteered in my lab, worked with another undergrad that had been working with me for about a year. I was secretly asking my other student, so what do you think of MJ? How's she working out? Does she look like she's gonna do a good job? And then she was into my class, I really didn't know her that well. And so I was waiting to get the first exam to see how she did on my first exam. She asked me about a paid position, and I kind of put her off for a little bit, and and I handed back the exams and I said, You want a job paid? She said, Well, are you waiting on my test? And I said, Yes, I was. So that is a true story.
SPEAKER_01:I did know that I kind of had a feeling, I don't know why, anyways, like, you know, you want to impress the person that you are kind of working for, volunteering for, and I'm taking his class. So I wanted to like do good on my first exam, but then I handed it to him and he he started looking at it like really intensely from the beginning, and I was like, I know what he was doing. Apparently he liked what he saw. Well, I hope so. It seems like it.
SPEAKER_02:So do you have students launch their own research projects or are they always under a professor?
SPEAKER_00:It's very rare does it happen that a student they usually don't have the background to know where to do the research, and it takes funding in the sciences to do research. And so usually it's with a professor, sometimes we'll pair them with a graduate student.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell Would you explain to the audience about this funding with grants? Because a lot of folks don't realize how much you have to work just to get outside funding, right?
SPEAKER_00:You know, when you take a job as a professor, your university will invest a little bit of money in you to get you started. But the expectation in the sciences that you're going to bring in grants to bring in more equipment and to bring in students. So in the sciences, a lot of our graduate students that are working on their thesis, they have to get paid. They have to be able to make a living. So we have to have salary for graduate students. We need help from undergraduates, and I like to be able to pay them as well. And then it takes money to travel. You know, if we're going to Brownsville and we go for three days and we have to get hotels and we have to eat all our meals, it takes grant money to do that. I mean, I you could do it on your own, but I'd go broke really fast if I self-funded my own research. And the university doesn't fund us for research really. You know, there are small awards that you can apply for that are competitive, but those are often earmarked for new faculty members. And as you said, I've been here a while. I don't want to compete with new professors for those kinds of funds because they need them more than I do. So I have to rely on external sources of funding. So I'm all the time writing grants. So we don't just teach as professors. I do a lot of grant writing. I write a lot of papers, manuscripts. If you don't turn that research into papers that are published or go present at conferences, then people aren't gonna know who you are. So when you apply for grants, they're not going to look as kindly on it.
SPEAKER_02:I'm really glad you're explaining that because a lot of folks think all we do as college professors we just go in, we teach our classes, and we go home, and what a cushy job, you know. We don't work in the summers and and yet what do you do in the summers? You're spending all your time in the field.
SPEAKER_00:I work all summer, always have.
SPEAKER_02:And then the job it takes to write grants, it's a lot of trouble, I know. What's an example of a grant you recently got just to kind of put some dollars and cents in the grant that MJ's working on was funded by Texas Parks and Wildlife.
SPEAKER_00:So the grants from Texas Parks and Wildlife usually are in the$50,000 to$150,000 range. It varies depending on what you're going to do, how much travel there is, how complicated it is, how many years the study goes. The larger grant that I have is part of a multi-state grant funded by the USDA to look at the ecosystem of these wetlands. Our portion of that is around half a million dollars. There are federal programs to construct wetlands for habitat. But what often happens with a lot of these kinds of situations is they construct them, but no one ever goes back to evaluate are they doing what they were supposed to do? Are they functioning the way they were supposed to function?
SPEAKER_02:Now what do you mean by a constructed habitat?
SPEAKER_00:It's like an old agricultural field that they'll dig out and literally pipe water into. So that you have a wetland for So waterfowl for amphibian breeding. So a lot of these wetlands, what happens is you don't often don't have fish in wetlands because they dry down and and fill back up. So what happens when they fill up in the spring this time of year they're filling up. And the aquatic insects are breeding in them and the amphibians are breeding right now. We're going to go do some wetland sampling, and one of the things we'll do is nighttime frog call surveys.
SPEAKER_02:Frog call surveys.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. The frogs breed at night. And so we go out at night and we have to learn to identify them by call. But we can hear the calls and we can estimate how many there are calling, and uh that's one of the things that we do.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell And so when you find out how many frogs are there on an April night, what does that do?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell Well, we're also looking at natural wetlands at the same time. Ones that have been a wetland for a long time. Think of Caddo Lake. That's a really big one. But you know, there are natural wetlands that have always been wetlands or have been for a long time. Some of these constructed wetlands are only 20 years old, 10 years old, and so we don't know how long it takes for them to mature to where the frogs are breeding in them. Some of the salamanders, for example, from our study so far, it has to be a pretty mature wetland or a natural wetland to start to get some of the amphibians like sirens and amphiuma because they're obligate aquatic. So when the wetland starts to dry down, they have to be able to bury in the mud. And so if it goes completely dry and it's really dry for a long period of time, they may not survive.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. Wow. Tell me a little bit about what's the worst thing about being a biology major besides carrying heavy stuff in the hot sun?
SPEAKER_01:It's a lot to manage. Even though you're taking, you know, let's say on average 120 credit hours, you're gonna be at school maybe two to three times a week from 8 a.m. to five p.m. because you have labs. Labs are three hours typically, sometimes four, and they're gonna consist of just working throughout the entire time doing an experiment. It's really tiring, and with that kind of coursework, it requires a lot more time management because let's say on you know, a max two to three classes a day, and then you're gonna go to a lab from 2 p.m. typically till five p.m. and then you have to go home or maybe for some students work, and then you're gonna go home and do all the homework, all the writing the lab report. Let's say you're in a class, they expect you to read ahead, you know, reading ahead before the day before. It's a lot of time management and it can get overwhelming for a lot of people.
SPEAKER_02:You know, this is one of the biggest um messages we've wanted to get out to students out there who are, you know, aspiring to go to college, is that it looks like you don't have as much to do because you maybe have four or five classes and they only meet two or three times a week. But it's all the other work you do to get ready for those classes. It's the studying, it's the lab work, it's the writing it up. And so we provide that time, but like you said, it's a crunch. It's a lot of work, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:It's a lot of work, and I have to say I'm not perfect at it either. Everybody who comes in, it's where you're going to be good at time management. It's a learning process, and that's why in any STEM field is like it's a very important factor of just taking a step back, breathing, organizing.
SPEAKER_02:I'm struck, because you know, of course I teach in the humanities side of the College of Arts and Sciences, that there's a lot more flexibility, I think, for us in what we can take in the order we have to take it. We don't have to put it, you know, chem one, chem two. And I think that you're right that students need to know about that ahead of time and understand that self-advising isn't very smart advising. No, it's not.
SPEAKER_00:It's not.
SPEAKER_03:MJ, we've already talked a little bit about what made you want to be a biology major and how you knew you were a good fit. Do you have any kind of final advice maybe for someone who's trying to figure out where they're gonna go in college and maybe they're interested in the sciences, but they want to make sure that they're a good fit for the program?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Well, I think there's a lot of different ways I could answer that because it it's so different for maybe everyone, you know, going into a different field. But I'm gonna kind of hone in on biology specifically or maybe the sciences, like chemistry, biochemistry, biology, where as I can speak more towards and what I've experienced in my life is just like I was telling Dr. Ross, that first semester you come in, if you're going to maybe in your first year, it's a lot of growing pain. And that's okay. If at any point, you know, it's not going your way, it's okay to look around you and notice that every single person in that room is probably struggling and wanting to pull their hair out too. And that took me a while to just breathe and say, okay. Especially I'm very type-based student. I was pre-med, I wanted the good GPA, and I wanted to be perfect. And I realized that, oh, I'm gonna get a B in my chemistry classes. And that was a big hit. And it's not just me, it's most of the people around you. So I think that would be my biggest advice is it's okay to get a B in a chemistry class. It's okay to get a B in a hard biology class, even if you're a biology person, there's so many levels to things to say, you know, it's okay to yourself about that. And then, you know, time management is huge. And making sure that outside of school you have something that you're doing that is not just chemistry and biology and math classes. I feel like I'm pretty good about making sure I take breaks. Go on a run or, you know, go watch a movie. Any college person needs to know it's okay to take a break, especially if you're a student like me. I worked all throughout college, always had a job, maybe one or two, and it gets to be a lot. So just making sure that you take time for yourself.
SPEAKER_02:So have you been able to schedule your courses around your work or your work around your courses?
SPEAKER_01:That's the nice thing about working on campus. You can work around your courses. They are never gonna tell you, you can't do that. Any department, you tell them, you know, I have class at this time, I need to go home, I need to do this for an exam. They're going to be lenient with you, they're gonna be understanding. That's something I'll always stress to people when they come, you know, find a job on campus is great if that if that works for you because they'll be so much more flexible.
SPEAKER_02:We understand. Ashley is is being paid to help me with this job, and every now and then we have to say, it's time to go work on your big project for MassCom class, Ashley. It's okay. And she gets her hours in at another time. So, Ashley, yeah, I think you had a question you wanted to throw at Dr. Williams too, didn't you?
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Powell I did. And it's kind of the same question, but from the professor's angle. So let's say someone's coming up on maybe going into a master's program or graduating, and they're thinking about what kind of jobs they want to have. We've already talked a lot about life as a biology professor, but how would someone maybe get to know whether or not this is a kind of career that they want to build towards?
SPEAKER_00:Getting involved as an undergraduate is very helpful in research because you'll like or dislike something very quickly if you you know if you get into it and you don't like it, you can switch. You know, volunteer if you want to be a medical doctor, make sure you know what that looks like because that's also a very stressful job. It's not what it looks like on TV. You have sometimes have the stress of owning your own business. I don't teach students how to run a business. And often as a physician or a dentist, you're running a business. You have employees that depend on you and their families depend on you. So there's a lot more to think about in careers to make sure that you want to do that. I have pre-vet students. I love pre-vet students. I've put a lot of students into vet schools successfully all around the country and that have worked for me. But I often tell them make sure you spend some time in a vet or work at a vet's office because it's not just taking care of animals. You have to deal with people. And sometimes those people are not nice to animals. And you're gonna see a lot of ugly stuff as a veterinarian, and you've got to have a thick skin and a and a stomach for it. And a lot of people aren't prepared for that.
SPEAKER_02:I know that the medical students now at our school of medicine have started experiencing the issues of family systems and how a family contributes or does not contribute to the health of their patient, and they realize they have to deal with much more than just the symptoms of the patient. That there's so much more going on in the family system. So that's a that's a wise bit of advice. But is there any last bit of information you want to share with them or wisdom or advice so that they might be able to make good decisions about perhaps coming into your field?
SPEAKER_01:I think that taking it slow is okay. If you don't know for sure what you want. Actually, some of my favorite classes I've taken were over in the English department. So I think it's great to explore other areas. I also think, like Dr. Williams said, do not be afraid to go to your professor your first semester here, especially if you are in these sciences and say, How can I get involved? It's very intimidating for students to come in, especially you're going to be in a huge biology class if you're taking gen bio. And all of these students are coming from different areas. You're going to have all kinds, uh, kinesiology, biology, chemistry, biochemistry, you know, and then other random people who are in there for some reason. And with that being said, it is just overwhelming. And you might be intimidated to go to a professor and say, I don't know what I want to do. Research sounds cool, or even just going to their office hours and chatting with them. Do not be intimidated to do that. Do not be intimidated to do that your first semester, because I wish I would have done that sooner.
SPEAKER_02:So, Dr. Williams, do you have any last things to say about biology or your department?
SPEAKER_00:MJ said exactly what I was going to say, actually. Get to know your professors. So I'm going to have about 70 students in my biogeography class this fall. I will get to know a handful of them very well. I'll know everyone's name, the people that sit in the back. I'll probably forget your name next semester if you never talk to me. So, you know, it's the person that sits in the front that engages with me, that comes to my office and talks and is, you know, that's the person I'm gonna get to know. Those are the people that are gonna get jobs in my lab. That's how it works. If you sit in the back and you never engage with your faculty members, do you gonna not have the same college experience?
SPEAKER_01:And so it's up to you to do it. I completely agree. And something else to add to that, you know, after biology, and m most people in biology want to go to some form of graduate school. You need those recommendation letters. And for me personally, I don't feel comfortable asking professors that I maybe took their class and good, you know, did a good job in there. But you want them to be able to say, me and this student, you know, had plentiful and important conversations that were meaningful, and you know, not only did they do well in my class, but I can say having interactions with them that they were a delight to have in my class. And I think that's important too.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, teachers love to have students that are engaged and care. It only enhances everybody's experience when you come out of yourself and and engage in that way. So I'm so glad you said that. So I think we've about finished up, but anything last questions or comments from you, Ashley?
SPEAKER_03:Nothing really, just a usual reminder to anybody who might listen to this after the fact and is curious about coming into college or about biology as a field. You can always leave us a question and the comment section of the YouTube video or send us an email.
SPEAKER_02:And if we can't answer it, we're gonna go after Dr. Williams and MJ and ask them to answer it because I know they're eager to help you all understand what a great field biology is.
