Biology

I had my first day of classes for this semester today! They started at eleven so I could have slept in, but I have work at eight, so I was already almost tired when my first class started, and had to persevere through four hours of classes after nearly three hours of early morning work. My first class was your basic run-o'-the-mill college biology, and the professor said something interesting that I didn't quite understand.

"Biology is kind of.... You know that Supreme Court decision on porn, and they were like, 'You know porn when you see it?' Well, biology is like that, you know life when you see it." As is any college lecture hall, there was a certain amount of background chatter going, but as soon as she said "porn" the whole class went absolutely silent, and across the room there was a general vibe of confusion and a little bit of "What the hell?" After the few precious seconds of silence in the audience, during which the professor kept talking about the kingdoms in biology, there was a subtle eruption of whispering. The atmosphere during those moments was filled with disbelief, more confusion, and a little bit of "What the hell?!" Did the professor just want to show off her knowledge of old Supreme Court decisions? Was she trying to make a connection between biology and the rest of the world, as if to say "Biology fits into the social world, too?" It might have been that one because teachers always want you to believe that what you're learning is potentially useful in the real world and that you might actually need it someday! Even so, her point was badly made, even disruptive. Perhaps she just wanted to get our attention. But this calamity of a sentence caused me to think about times when maybe I don't know life when I see it. Rocks aren't alive, yet they are part of biomes. If they're not made of cells, then are they just mish-mashed atoms? Minerals are basically sloppy chunks of....stuff!

After a few minutes of brain rambling, I turned my attention back to the introductory lecture. Maybe the motive of her porn sentence was to make us think about science, as I had just done? I doubt anyone else had gone the direction with that phrase that I did. And if that was what she wanted, I was thinking more about chemistry than biology. Or was it molecular biology?!

So now I am confused about what even went on for that hour, wondering if she will always make weird references to biology, and worried that I won't do so well in that class if she does.