Re: Queries answered and more

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Posted by Patrick Alexander on March 04, 2002 at 04:00:41:

In Reply to: Queries answered and more posted by Raymond Hoser on February 27, 2002 at 16:19:36:

: 1/ Just so you know, I did study at Sydney Uni (2/3 of a Science degree) and then stopped when NPWS officials in Sydney lent on lecturerers to force me out of uni due to my onging battles with them.
: Times and events made me never finish.
: As it happened, by 2nd year Uni we were still only up to underlining (italicising) scientific names (learning to do this), which gives you an idea as to how basic it was.
: You see the Uni course had to assume the intake was dumb and stupid and knew nothing - absoultely nothing, which as it turned out was true.
: the reality is that any half-trained private keeper of several years experience would in many cases run rings around many a so-called "professional".

Could you explain why you feel that your experiences demonstrate a compelling difficulty with academia? As it would happen, I am currently enrolled in an undergraduate biology program in the US, and recently took a course in my second year that covered, among other things, the matter of italicization/underlining of systematic names--but since this was an introductory biology course, I don't find it at all inappropriate or worrisome that it covered introductory material. Furthermore, it's not particularly uncommon for hobbyists to be unfamiliar with this sort of introductory material--simple Mendelian genetics, also covered in the aforementioned course, is frequently stumbled over in the online forums I've read--so it's hard to see how a hobbyist is enabled to `run rings around' an academic by the fact that many academics were not familiar with such material before taking introductory biology courses.

Patrick Alexander

Follow Ups:

Re: Queries answered and more Scott Thomson 03/04/02 (2)
- Re: Queries answered and more WW 03/05/02 (1)
  - Re: Queries answered and more Scott Thomson 03/05/02 (0)

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: : : 1/ Just so you know, I did study at Sydney Uni (2/3 of a Science degree) and then stopped when NPWS officials in Sydney lent on lecturerers to force me out of uni due to my onging battles with them. : : Times and events made me never finish. : : As it happened, by 2nd year Uni we were still only up to underlining (italicising) scientific names (learning to do this), which gives you an idea as to how basic it was. : : You see the Uni course had to assume the intake was dumb and stupid and knew nothing - absoultely nothing, which as it turned out was true. : : the reality is that any half-trained private keeper of several years experience would in many cases run rings around many a so-called "professional". : Could you explain why you feel that your experiences demonstrate a compelling difficulty with academia? As it would happen, I am currently enrolled in an undergraduate biology program in the US, and recently took a course in my second year that covered, among other things, the matter of italicization/underlining of systematic names--but since this was an introductory biology course, I don't find it at all inappropriate or worrisome that it covered introductory material. Furthermore, it's not particularly uncommon for hobbyists to be unfamiliar with this sort of introductory material--simple Mendelian genetics, also covered in the aforementioned course, is frequently stumbled over in the online forums I've read--so it's hard to see how a hobbyist is enabled to `run rings around' an academic by the fact that many academics were not familiar with such material before taking introductory biology courses. : Patrick Alexander

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