Last night, I had the strangest dream.

I dreamt that I married my right-wing, Evangelical, sexophobic coworker. It would have been a nightmare, but in the end, I won; she was sick on our wedding night, so I had the advantage, and was able to torch the house and get the insurance money. While this reveals many disturbing things about how my subconscious mind works, I consider it a win.

So, I've figured out something about my feelings toward biology. We were having a chat about it in the break room last night, and the point came up that intro biology courses are designed, not to generate interest in the subject (for those who may not have it as a major), nor to prepare people for future bio classes (for those who have already selected it), but to weed out bad students. This pisses me off, because I think of it as a bad educational policy.

But then, I started thinking about it as a business policy. And it works damn well, as long as demand exceeds supply. I mean, if you can only reasonably support so many biology students, and you get about three times that number of potential biology students, then you can afford to do things like turn people away. So now I'm pissed off for an entirely new reason!

You see, I (like so very many of my friends) am a fan of the less popular programs. I have probably met more business majors than sociology students, but they haven't come out to me. So, if I thought the world consisted only of people whose major I know, I would think that it was chock full of folks who study things like anthropology, comparative religion, environmental studies, a foreign language of some sort, communications, or philosophy. These are all great things to study, but let's face it; none of these programs can afford to actually turn people away. They need students, so the intro courses in these programs are interesting, fun, and educational, instead of being vehicles of exclusion. Imagine that; professors who teach to students who learn. It's like the university were in the business of educating, instead of just selling people degrees.