anitza • net

I love The Love Lab. I have yet to read/buy Mitlon Love’s book Probably More Than You Want to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast. I really want to though, because, well, his writing style is very amusing. For instance, here is an excerpt from one of his pages on his site:

Question: If I only take the minimum number of classes required per quarter/semester in order to graduate, will something bad happen to me in later life? Answer: Nobody cares.

If it is a matter of doing well at 4 classes per quarter/semester or doing mediocre at 5 classes a whack, take whatever is the minimum (always assuming that you are making the requisite progress towards graduation). A degree in biology can be very, very rugged. Do not underestimate the time and energy it will consume, particularly in the first 2 years.

Question: Well, that’s fine for you to say. But what about my fellow students who just glide through? How can they take 18 units, hold down a job as a software trouble shooter, teach salsa at the community center on weekends, and bring baskets of food to shut-ins? I’m just barely hanging on with 4 classes, 2 meals a day, and a level of hygiene that would make James Boswell blanch. Answer: Ah, I see the problem. It may surprise you know, but those people are androids. Really, they are skillfully crafted half humans and half machines, produced deep within the Rocky Mountains at the Strategic Air Command headquarters near Colorado Springs. I repeat, for those of you who are not androids, At Least In the Beginning, Take The Minimum Number of Classes Required per Quarter/Semester. Forget Taoism. When it comes to your first year or two of college, this is truly The Way.

Very sound and straighforward advice. I ran into them first with their “So you wanna be a marine biologist?“. OMG, I loved that. “Three Really, Really Bad Reasons to Want to Be a Marine Biologist
Reason Number One: “I want to be a marine biologist so that I can talk to dolphins.” Still cracks me up. SOOOooooooo many people go into it for that. I never did. It was all the other stuff. Yeah, dolphins are cool, but they are also vile vicious intelligent creatures that remind me of some of the worst things that people do. They are way too similar to us for them to be my favorite. So anyway, yeah.

I dunno why I posted all that. I guess for those of you that aren’t marine biologists (everyone on my flist except for one) and wouldn’t have run into it by any other means. So lot’s of love for The Love Lab.

Oh, and did you hear? There’s a tsunami on the way caused by the earthquake in Japan. At least, that is what the local news is trying to make me believe, but I guess I have to wait til after Oprah to get the update on this life saving information. *rolls eyes*

16 Responses to ""

mauvaise_etoile says:

November 15, 2005 at 1:45 am

*loves the nerdiness in Mag*

(Don’t feel bad, we’re all nerds about something, no? Lord knows I am…)
1. anitza says:
  
  November 15, 2005 at 1:49 am
  
  lol
  I love the av you choose. “don’t feel bad” lol
  
  Did you actually read any of that? hahahahaha If you did, you are so cool. If you didn’t, then, well, you aren’t. :p
  1. mauvaise_etoile says:
    
    November 15, 2005 at 1:59 am
    
    Ya I read all of that ^ up there. I went to the website, but didn’t get very far, cause uh…well, my av said it all 😉
venusmeridian says:

November 15, 2005 at 4:12 am

I hate to sound like an android, but I disagree, at least for some people (at least for me). I liked having lots of classes in my first 2 years. In fact, my first 2 years were the years I liked; really really liked, in fact. Not to mention that if it had taken me 5 years to finish, I probably wouldn’t have. So, different strokes for different folks, I say. Although maybe that’s why decided then not to use my major in the end? Dunno… But that website is really funny.
1. anitza says:
  
  November 15, 2005 at 4:18 am
  
  Very true, one formula does not work for everone. What was your major?
  1. venusmeridian says:
    
    November 15, 2005 at 5:27 am
    
    Zoology with an emphasis in ethology (animals behaviors). I also worked in a couple behavioral neurobiology labs. I never took a ton of classes at a time; I think I usually did about 16 credits a sem (min was 12 and max was 18), and then I did a few summer classes, and I came in with a whole bunch of retro credits, so I graduated in 3 & 1/2 years. Then, when I graduted, I decided I didn’t want to be a biologist or a doctor or a vet, like I had planned. I am now attempting to get into advertising. I know, I’m odd…
    1. anitza says:
      
      November 15, 2005 at 6:09 am
      
      You are an android!
      1. venusmeridian says:
        
        November 15, 2005 at 7:56 am
        
        LOL; I guess I am.
skylanth says:

November 15, 2005 at 5:01 am

I worship the Love Lab and have taken their advice.

Then again, I did spent a pretty big portion of my college experience talking with dolphins…well, /to/ dolphins, in any case. Heh, I wonder what they’d say about me…
1. anitza says:
  
  November 17, 2005 at 6:21 pm
  
  Well, you were a “lab slave”. I think they’d sympathize.
silent_kb says:

November 15, 2005 at 8:58 pm

I so thought you were going to say “I just have to wait for Oprah to give me this life saving information,” and I was thinking “See? Oprah already rules the world. She doesn’t need a title.”
1. anitza says:
  
  November 16, 2005 at 6:32 pm
  
  lol – ok so Oprah does rule the world, but that wasn’t the point of what I wrote. lol!
canutius says:

November 16, 2005 at 10:07 am

Well, according to: Two Really, Really Good Reasons to Want to Be a Marine Biologist, reason no. 1, I should be chief of all marine biologists. I do slob dress real well, live in my tevas in the summer, salomen (which I can’t spell properly) hiking boots and jeans in the winter. I also definitely would not want to drink copious amounts of fermented grape juice while on the high seas. I would prefer to be sober when being attacked by a shark, a giant squid, or the sex starved marine biologist mentioned in the web site. I definitely missed my calling.

Just for the record, I was an android in college. I did 18-21 units a trimester in my last year. When I walked in to my appointment to see if I had all the requirements to graduate, the whole office actually stopped what they were doing, stared and several said “oh that’s you?!?” Wispering and pointing ensued. I shall just say one more thing. No Social Life (see? I would have made an excellent marine biologist).
1. anitza says:
  
  November 16, 2005 at 6:34 pm
  
  You should have been the next Cousteau! (you android freak!)
  
  *loves*
  1. treeling_75 says:
    
    November 17, 2005 at 7:12 am
    
    Gah. You are all android freaks. I took only the standard (minimum) amount of hours for full-time (9 per quarter, I believe) and graduated first in my class with scads of meaningless awards. And I was HAPPY and had lots of time for pointless fine-arts minors (two! woot!) and Oprah and extracurriculars like editing the Uni’s student paper and movies and junky novels and they PAID ME to go to grad school.
    
    I mean screw it. They glance at your gpa, not how long it took, and then they look very hard at your GRE/LSAT/MCAT/Whatever and your recs. You only get to do college once and it’s SO FUN. Make it last! Have a beer, do a semester abroad, get laid, get things pierced or tattooed. Hell chances are better that you’ll end up working in the tattoo parlor than working in what you were planning on making your major anyway– may as well start broadening your horizons.
    
    *cough* So, um, yes. I like that guy’s philosophy.
    
    And why are dolphins vile, out of curiosity? Was it dolphins that I remember hearing would drown baby whales and eat them? Or was that their close cousin the orca? Anyway that *is* vile.
    
    /random
    1. anitza says:
      
      November 17, 2005 at 6:18 pm
      
      Orcas are dolphins. So that is a yes to that question. 🙂
      
      I dunno, I mean, dolphins are cool, don’t get me wrong. They still fascinate me, but not any more than many animals out there do. Now, sharks, for example, really fascinate me. On top of that, invertebrates really fascinate me. But dude, so does seaweed. On the dolphin thing, there’s been these studies where they’ve investigated these seemingly weird behaviors of dolphins called “calf tossing” where they’d see a dolphin toss what looked like a calf out in front of it. People thought they were playing…
      
      they were porpoises. And they were getting chased and rammed and thrown out of the water at such high speeds that the internal damage done on those poor animals.. just wow. And why do they do this? For fun. For training. For social mean-ness. Because they can.
      
      And behaviors like that are just waaaay too human for me to like them as much as other people do.

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