Now to wait on everything to go through. I looked through the science programs available at Lebanon Valley, I looked through the history and noticed quite a few went on to be doctors in prestegious institutions. I’ve been speaking with the director of the biology dept for a few days now on the phone and will meet him on Friday. He keeps telling me how much more intense their chemistry is than the one at comm coll. I keep telling him, I got an A on the ACS exam with my little comm coll, I think I can hack it. There is no math pre requisite for physics there though he recomended I meet the physics director to see what math I should brush up on or if I should take extra math since it is my tough subject. I meet him officially tomorrow.
I drove down to drop off my application fee. The thing I was not prepared for was the massive references to christianity there. It almost scared me when I saw “The Truth Shall Set You Free” plastered along the entire lenght of the science building, but ultimately, after scouring the website, I see no biblical alusions on the web site whatsoever and a lot of clout for the science department with awards and rankings and such.
If my little post christian atheist self can get past the Jesus pics and HUGE chapel I may just be o.k.
Alright, Jesus pics are o.k. I was just afraid of a creationism agenda being pushed. I will dig further tomorrow, but from what I’m seeing there is no agenda. And 2-3 students matriculating into med school annually is pretty appealing to me.
Be VERY careful of schools that have any sort of overt religious affiliation. I know at least one person off the top of my head who went to one such university and hated it so much she dropped out after her first semester and is now finishing up at UC Davis. I would ask for some copies of syllabi for courses and see if you can audit a few lectures.
Any sort of injection of propaganda into the material can distract you and/or waste your time when you need to learn evidence-based science in order to do well on the MCAT and beyond. Be careful and make sure that doesn’t happen!
Good luck there & congrats on taking a big step forward! Looks like they have a solid biology program with a core strength of classes and history of excellence.
If your Bio class starts with slides on how Adam and Eve rode around on non meat eating Raptors, then it’s time to find another school.
- HugzMonster Said:
Oh dear god, I'm going to die, lmfao!!!
I’m meeting w/ the director of the biology department today. I will know more then. I will seriously walk away and not come back if it has religious affiliation.
For now I’m telling myself that Harvard has a lot of religious iconicism on campus too and that it’s the nature of schools that have been around for over a hundred years. It doesn’t, however, mean it’s religious in nature right? This one goes back to the late 1800’s. I scoured the website again for any indications of religiosity and saw none. Cross your fingers. I’m not officially withdrawn from comm. coll. so I could always just stay the course there.
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- BOOBS Said:
For now I'm telling myself that Harvard has a lot of religious iconicism on campus too and that it's the nature of schools that have been around for over a hundred years. It doesn't, however, mean it's religious in nature right? This one goes back to the late 1800's. I scoured the website again for any indications of religiosity and saw none. Cross your fingers. I'm not officially withdrawn from comm. coll. so I could always just stay the course there.
Well, I've never been to Harvard, but if that's true then absolutely if that school has been around a long time too then it could just be remnants from an age when everyone was religious which of course would mean it isn't necessarily a part of the school anymore. Good luck!
- HugzMonster Said:
ok - again...
I don't think this will ever get old...
I have returned feeling much better about this place.
The director was looking over my syllabi from comm coll and noticed there was nothing labeled as “evolution” in the course content. When he asked I stated my professor would toss it in here and there but in years past every time she’d try and delve into any depth a creationism theorist would get angry and cause a debaucle, so she got tired of it and basically taught only the very basic definition of evolution.
The director sort of chuckled and said “oh we have had a few of those come through here and we just tell them it’s not a part of our science curriculum and if they want to learn here they will learn about the evolutionary process”
So I sighed and said good because I was a little afraid after seeing all the iconicism on campus and the fact that my original undergrad was from a christian institution where the only science course we had to take was a “debunking Darwinism” course complete w/ horrific science, I was a little skittish.
He kept asking me if I understood that their sciences were much more intensive than my comm coll. and I said that I was fine w/ that. After all I wouldn’t be pre med if I wasn’t ready for a challenge.
I’m starting to understand the big push though for a 4 year college/uni. For as much as I liked our program at the comm coll, we did no dissection in bio. We had basic microscope labs, and only a few dissection microscopes. This place has quite a few dissection labs for bio 1, none of which I received at HACC so I need to find ways to study some of the material before class starts (I’m told it’s all in the text book which is the same so that’s a plus). They have scanning and tunneling microscopes and many other tests to see our comprehension of the material. And, no christian references other than the HUGE chapel and the old statues randomly placed around campus. I suppose if I wanted to be religious I could go to chapel, but for now I’ll pretend it doesn’t exist. 
And on another sort of related note, we may have found a day care provider that is reasonable enough that I can stay after class and study kids free every day for a bit. That will be awesome. I’m going for a face to face interview and to see how the baby likes her today. I interviewed her extensively on the phone already and feel good about her (first one in about 200 names I’ve looked at).
It looks like things are coming together.
congrats on the big step… but please explain to me how a religious affiliation = bad college? i really hope that i do not have to start listing the top tiered schools with religious affiliation…
i also hope that i do NOT have to remind you all who thought up the theory for the big bang and showed that the universe was expanding from its origin (a primordial super-atom), math & physics of it, presented it to einstein himself and was shot down because it was “abominable” (hint: he was a catholic minister and scientist)… but now we take his theory as truth…
religion does not have to exist separately from science - if that were the case, newton would have never graced us with his input and theories (and a host of other scientists’ works would be lost as well)… in fact, i have no quam over debating that there is a creator - or a “big banger” if you will.
just as it is ignorant to say this all had to happen by chance and there is simply no possibility of a high-order of being or creator(secularism) it is equally ignorant of the religious type to put a creator into a finite box or pretend to know exactly what the process was of creation.
just because the oral, and later written, tradition of the Torah (specifically Bereshit, Genesis) did not include the science of the big-bang or evolution does not mean that the creator did not use those methods to set in motion what we see the world as today.
genetic code is rather marvelous and the fact fractals may be found in everything is astonishing… math and science dominate, i get that… but is there really something wrong with me because i choose to believe an intelligent being set all that we know into motion?
i mean, really… for all those religious people out there - think about a supposed tenant of your faith, that G-d is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipitant… if G-d is really ALL these things, would G-d really have to sit there and oversee every step of creation or would he just be able to go “BAM” (like the chef) and set it all into motion - letting the nature he created take its course?
i liken it to creating a database… there are a number of ways that i could populate a desired database, filling in every field…
i could take the personal way, and mannually look up and enter each field…
or, i could take the most intelligent way - write code that will automatically search and populate the fields within the database…
even from a biblical standpoint - the first thing is what? is this a description of the universe? nope, this is a description of earth and how things got started… also note, there are two accounts of creation - either this is an error or this is done on purpose… notice the biblical hebrew for the state of nature - the earth being without form (tohu) translates as: lie in waste, a desolate surface, a desert, or figuratively worthless; and, the earth being void (bohu) means empty or in undistinguishable ruin…
now, everyone come back to science and imagine what earth must have looked like when it was just starting too cool off from being a smoldering planet… pounded by comets that deposited their minerals and water… sounds like it could line up with the literal translation of the hebrew Bereshit (Genesis) to me.
this is just the tip of it though… i mean, if you were told as an infant how all this came into being (the physics and math) would you even know how to remember it all or write it down?? nope, not a chance… now, take away every single scientific discovery since the dawn of man and try and explain everything we have learned up until this day to someone from that frame of time… they would have no freaking clue what you were saying; so, instead, they put it all in lay terms.
and let’s not forget this one… so important i will quote it directly:
Genesis 1:20 - “and G-d said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.”
Genesis 1:24 - “And G-d said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.”
So how does evolution work again? how did this all start for us? oh yeah, right… it starts in Genesis 1:20 where life starts in the oceans… notice G-d doesn’t say I am making this life right now and plopping it in the ocean… no, the ocean itself becomes the hotbed of creation - all set in motion by the creator… then what happens? oh, life starts to spring up on the land… hmmm, this sounds like evolution to me… and did G-d just place the animals in every kingdom, species, and genus on the planet? nope, it says that they came from the ocean first, then the earth… the first single cell organism to the fish with legs to creatures big and small…
but i digress and am sorry for derailing this thread and the good news you had for all of us!
just be careful about knocking religion (although i affectionately call it faith for me) because some panties may get jumbled and sand will definately get in crevaces where the offended feel most uncomfortable… who knows, maybe an adcomm feels the same as i do? use your imagination, how cruel can irony be?
but now that i pause and re-read the posts concerning religion… its less about faith that can allign with science as we know it today (and tomorrow cause it is always changing) and more about the RELIGIOSITY that refutes science in the name of ignorance…
this all said - is it too verbose yet?? - i don’t like evolution. i can’t prove it by replicating it in a lab and i can’t disprove it either… so guess what, it is just one of many ways in which G-d could have done things to me. when it is time to study it further in my prereqs, i will eat it up just like any other science portion - why? because it attempts to explain something that has baffled and will continue to baffle humanity since we became self-aware…
the way i see it, to NOT study as many theories as possible is to only limit oneself to a certain perspective… which most of the time dooms us. funny example of such: nobody knows how to swim and almost always drown when in water - therefore, if someone floats or can swim and does not drown, the emphatic conclusion is that they must be a witch.
again, sorry for derailing the thread 
Give me a second to go back and re read your thread, but I wanted to explain my initial angst against a christian institution.
Barring my baggage w/ the faith (and we all have baggage somewhere ha!)
My original undergrad is from a christian institution. In ten years since graduating, the only job I’ve been able to find with it, is a casheir at McDonalds. Not even churches would hire me (as my degree is in church music and I am trained to be a music director of a congregation) because I was eithe r 1. the wrong denomination, or 2. a woman.
My huge fear was ending up with another useless degree and that was unacceptable for me, so I had to delve deeper into the program to be sure they were actually reputable. I don’t really care about religious affiliation other than that.
O.k. I will go back and finish reading the rest before I reply now.
Without derailing further into a theology discussion, I did go back and read further. I think you did finally understand what I am saying ultimately.
- The Truth Said:
I think I just explained this yes? Let me know if not.
i also hope that i do NOT have to remind you all who thought up the theory for the big bang and showed that the universe was expanding from its origin (a primordial super-atom), math & physics of it, presented it to einstein himself and was shot down because it was “abominable” (hint: he was a catholic minister and scientist)… but now we take his theory as truth…Well yes, of course. These wonderful men like Descartes had no other job but to sit and ponder the workings of the universe. Quite the task yes, however, I wonder if their lack of cardiovascular exercise took their toll. Just kidding of course. But without them we would not be where we are today.
just as it is ignorant to say this all had to happen by chance and there is simply no possibility of a high-order of being or creator(secularism) it is equally ignorant of the religious type to put a creator into a finite box or pretend to know exactly what the process was of creation. This is where I am going, and I see you are following my thought process.
genetic code is rather marvelous and the fact fractals may be found in everything is astonishing… math and science dominate, i get that… but is there really something wrong with me because i choose to believe an intelligent being set all that we know into motion? absolutely nothing wrong with it at all. I personally find there is too much focus on how it all came to be in some cases and most definitely in the christian institution I attended. Here’s the thing. In my mind, it matters not how we got here. Did we evolve? Were we created? It really matters not. What matters is what we are doing with the time we have been alotted on this earth. Will we leave it better than when we arrive or leave it worse? That is what matters. If we evolved then maybe primates are our long distant cousins, if so we must treat the animal kingdom w/ respect. If we were created, then in some respect we are all family and we must treat the entire world with respect lest we end up entering the artist’s gallery and destroying what he/she has strived to make beautiful. If it’s a combination of the two, even more of a reason for us to take heed, help those around us, reach out and connect and do our damndest to make this world a better place.
I’m going to skip through the scripture. I have great respect for it, as anyone with a church music degree would have, but I find I’ve had way too many theological discussions, and lessons and am past that point in my life. I think I’ve already explained why it does not matter to me what stance someone takes on our origins. I however come with a degree that had a set agenda for disproving Darwinism, and my fear of another christian institution was an agenda. I’m not entering medicine with an agenda in mind. I want an open, well rounded education. Which means, a little of everything as opposed to a lot of one thing. Perhaps my experience has tainted me. But it does force me to examine the core quality of the programs I am considering.
just be careful about knocking religion (although i affectionately call it faith for me) I believe you and I would both agree there is a difference between religion and faith.because some panties may get jumbled and sand will definately get in crevaces where the offended feel most uncomfortable… who knows, maybe an adcomm feels the same as i do? use your imagination, how cruel can irony be? I think I made a positive impression on the program director here. I believe in person with an adcom, I’d do the same. I’m not too worried about that.
but now that i pause and re-read the posts concerning religion… its less about faith that can allign with science as we know it today (and tomorrow cause it is always changing) and more about the RELIGIOSITY that refutes science in the name of ignorance…BINGO!
I’ll agree w/ your assessment on the theories, as none are able to be reproduced. I think I explained myself pretty clear above though yes?
the way i see it, to NOT study as many theories as possible is to only limit oneself to a certain perspective… which most of the time dooms us. funny example of such: nobody knows how to swim and almost always drown when in water - therefore, if someone floats or can swim and does not drown, the emphatic conclusion is that they must be a witch. That’s quite funny being it is instinctual for most infants under 6 months to float.
Somewhere along the way we do forget. Much like an infant forgets the startle reflex and we have to relearn things we’ve been taught in the past, unlearn others, and in the end hope to be comfortable in the world we find ourselves in.again, sorry for derailing the thread
No problem. Hopefully, I put your mind at rest.
And just because this smilie makes me laugh and for no other reason… enjoy Hilga… 
- BOOBS Said:
There's a key lesson in this statement and I hope you don't mind me using you as an example.
I too majored in a VERY "unemployable" subject for my first degree, Religion/Eastern Philosophy, but I made sure to get my minor in microbiology because I knew I'd need to get a job (and being premed helped too). Combined with a couple years lab expereince, I had absolutely no problems getting lab gigs with a BA in Religion.
Lesson here, there's nothing wrong with majoring in "what moves you" just plan for the fact that you may one day need to get a job. At least, this is what I just told my 12 year old daughter a few minutes ago when she expressed an interest in studying Astronomy in college.
ugggh i hate how this all works sometimes! for me, i am of an ilk that is hated by both the christian and jewish communities - i am what is known as a messianic jew (take away all the denominations, liturgy, and extrabiblical stuff that was added since about 70AD … essentially non-rabbinical judaism with a belief in the messiah).
christians want to welcome me into their congregations because i have the hebraic background… but really, they just want to convert a “jew.” and well, non-believing jews don’t like me because of the horrid atrocities perpetrated under the banner of “jesus.”
quite obviously your experience with the church and my experience is the same - its “my way or the highway” from that ilk, so to speak… i like to say, “no… its not your way, its Yahweh” (but since there is such a disconnect in the christian community from their jewish roots, they don’t even know one of the names of G-d is Yahweh). i digress alot huh??
but yeah, i can definately see your angst over an institution with a religious affiliation… especially with your past experiences - if you lived in the n. nj area i would invite you to my temple, we could use a full-time music director!
i’m glad your fears have been calmed about your new university - i think getting in there and taking your science courses there will be one of the best choices you have made for medical school!!
One other thing, that degeee in Religion made/makes it VERY easy to distinguish myself from the typical “premed” crowd, and I’m sure you’ll have the same experience when the time comes.
- pathdr2b Said:
- BOOBS Said:
There's a key lesson in this statement and I hope you don't mind me using you as an example.
I too majored in a VERY "unemployable" subject for my first degree, Religion/Eastern Philosophy, but I made sure to get my minor in microbiology because I knew I'd need to get a job (and being premed helped too). Combined with a couple years lab expereince, I had absolutely no problems getting lab gigs with a BA in Religion.
Lesson here, there's nothing wrong with majoring in "what moves you" just plan for the fact that you may one day need to get a job. At least, this is what I just told my 12 year old daughter a few minutes ago when she expressed an interest in studying Astronomy in college.
Feel free to read to her my example of what happened if you think it may persuade her to do both. Our pediatrician, actually has an undergrad in art history. I'll have to ask her if she ever found a job in the field, since I met her long after her grad school days.
- BOOBS Said:
Good choice and sorry to derail!
Truth, I never did understand the whole “convert the messianic”. We were of one of those denominations that tried to teach us they were “misled”. I always glazed over those lessons and am glad my theology professors were not of that persuasion.
Path, you think it’s distinguishable? I fear it may set me up for failure as my refusal to perform the monotonous “chapter charts” for my pentateuch class landed me with a D that I again refused to retake. Chapter charts were taking each chapter of each book and outlining them meticulously, separating the chapter into sections, and naming each section, then pulling out the highlights and expounding upon them.
My apologies now to our messianic friend because after the third week in Leviticus, I could not be creative anylonger and started labeling sections “101 ways to kill a lamb”. The actual stories, were fascinating, the law that is pulled out verse after verse repeatedly discusssing the same thing, the same consequenses, and the same rituals to get past said consequenses literally bored me to tears. Give me the story of Jael and the tent peg any day. Give me the hunt for the idol stolen by Rachel. Give me the stories surrounding the people, and what made them…them. The anthropological aspects of the text are riveting. The rules and counting how many people are available to fight in a battle, not so much.
I promise, I’m not that A.D.D. 18 year old fresh out of highschool, and could care less about the monotony involved in getting to my end goals now. This is probably a good thing as I suspect there will be a few classes that cause me to need a bit more cofee than others.
- pathdr2b Said:
- BOOBS Said:
Good choice and sorry to derail!
In all defense of astronomy majors, we had one at our cc that was part of the adjunct faculty. She taught one astronomy class along with a tenured professor, and she did tutoring in the math lab. Apparently the math courses required for astronomy are pretty intense and she got paid pretty good money by me to tutor me in algebra!