The Science Building on UP's campus is very dynamic, very active. It's a very active building. It's kind of really a little mini-community of itself. All the doors are open. Everybody's walking around engaged. You see professors walk through labs that aren't theirs, and say "hi" or ask what you're doing. It's a very dynamic and alive kind of building.
There are multiple sets of labs that do multiple different functions. We have chemistry labs, we have biology labs, we have dirty biology labs versus clean bio labs, depending on whether or not you're doing wildlife, ecological studies, or whether or not you're doing genetic studies, etc.
I would say a lot of our experiences in the lab are pretty hands-on. And a lot of my lab classes we've had a lot of fun opportunities. So in my forensics labs, we've gotten to like splatter blood around and light things on fire and kind of determine what would happen when you do those... Kind of go through the steps of that.
And then in chemistry, we've done some titration, things like that things... Things with color indicators, which are super fun. In my ecology labs, we've gotten to go outside a lot and collect samples from our actual environment right around us. One of our professors actually sometimes takes us out birdwatching at a lake nearby for her ornithology class.
All of our labs are really hands-on. We are a very, very small community. Those opportunities allow us with small class sizes to go out and do. That's what labs at least in science are about. And realistically, that's what the knowledge of science is about is applying that knowledge. Every student gets the opportunity to touch and to feel and to explore and to do that science. And it's really something you don't get in much, much larger universities.
We don't do a lot of looking at things and like not really doing much with that. We do tend to do everything step-by-step ourselves. There's not a lack of guidance from our professors, but they kind of let us explore it on our own and give us the opportunity to learn.
Science is never done in a vacuum. It's done with groups of people that are attacking a problem together. And I really like being a teacher, because I really enjoy working with students and helping them explore what drives them and is what's interesting to them as well.
