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My name's Ruth, and I'm an English major with an education minor. I'm from Baltimore, MD, and I'm hoping to teach English in an urban environment one day. My interest in biology is kind of half-formed at this point. I find literature looks a "LIFE" one way, and I'm starting to understand that literary view point of understanding the world and the way things work. When I think biology, the first thing that comes to mind is the poem "Bone," by Mary Oliver, which is this amazing poem about finding a whale's ear bone on a beach. She can make conclusions about herself and other people based on this ear bone, and I wonder if the same kinds of connections can be made more factually.

What I hope to learn from this course is how people are similar and how they are different from the rest of nature. We've given ourselves this caretaking, top-of-the-food-chain role, but do we deserve it? And how can I look at these things from a more practical, perhaps less theoretical view point?