General Biology I was designed for students majoring in areas such as Pre-Elementary Education, Pre-Nursing, and Pre-Business and for general majors (Liberal Arts) that just require some science. If you are a Pre-Biology, Pre-Chemistry, Pre-Pharmacy, or Pre-Medicine/Dentistry/Optometry major, you'll need to take the majors sequence, but if you've been out of high school for a long time, you may wish to take one quarter of the General Biology sequence as a refresher before taking the majors sequence. If you're a Pre-Secondary Education major, it will depend on what you're planning on teaching
I know that many of you have been out of high school for a number of years, never took science courses in high school, and have been told by other people that science is supposed to be hard and no fun, and thus you are coming into this course with preconceived notions that the course will be too hard, you won’t do well, and it won’t be any fun for you. However, past students (just like you) have repeatedly told me while this is not a course that is "a piece of cake" (this is college, after all) and they had to work hard to master the course material, that the material was not beyond their compression and that the course was fun and do-able. Be forewarned, though, that this is a college-level course, and to do well in the course, you must be able to read and write at a college level. If your placement test scores indicated that you need Preparatory English courses, I would strongly encourage you to postpone taking this course. If you can’t read the textbook, your grades will suffer, and you would be better off getting the proper background before attempting to take this course.
What is Biology?
Biology is the study of life. As we study biology, we will frequently run across a lot of "big words" that you will need to learn. One thing that can help you understand those words, which will also aid you in everything from reading the newspaper to communicating with your doctor, is to know the Greek or Latin (or other) derivations of the wordstems which make up those words. For example, the word "biology" is made from the wordstems bios, which means "life," and -logy which means "to study" or "the study of."
