Independent Study in Ornithology Essay

The year is wrap up up and so is my ornithology class And now we have to evaluate a credit curve that as no scale. confuse dun dun. This way of grading was actually a realisticly good thought because I can actually explain what all I did everywhere this semester and try to have it make a bit of sense (instead of on the dot having diagrams and babblings of bird-stuff). Ill try my best to stay away from the dry regurgitations of facts and such, but still get the point across that I feel my regurgitate should merit an A.In all seriousness, I did put in a lot of time and effort into this course eve more so than all of my honors classes so cold this year. Just the nature of this credit flex shows I really care ab push through what Im doing. It doesnt make sense numbers wise for all the effort even if I received an A+, it still lowers my GPA. I put one acrosst need any extra science credit either. This project was in the main to demonstrate that I will take the initiative to go higher up and beyond what is required in order to achieve something spectacular. Okay, maybe galore(postnominal) do not care one way or other that I pursued a credit flex and would not gestate it a particularly spectacular feat, but at least I can look back proudly at all that I have accomplished over the year.The bulk of my ornithology class was actually followers taunt notes from a college professor. Dan Tallman posted almost 120 pages of lecture notes low-down into sections. I grouped these sections into manageable heads that all seemed related and proceeded to summarize everything that I was l sack uping in 28 parts. This alone was a painstaking action it was like reading a textbook and pulling out the facts from apiece page. If I ran across unfamiliar vocabulary or concepts, I looked them up until I understood them (unlike some students erm that just skip the stuff they dont know and move on just to get the appellative done).Next I started familiarizing myself with the different topographies of birds. I started with the general corpse of a bird, consequently worked into the specifics of wings, beaks, legs, feet, toes, and even claws. Okay, so thats cool. But then I actually applied what I learned to a real life examplemy cockatieland put what I learned to use. I combined the different diagrams and types and compared them to those of my bird. Drawings can only get you so far determining what exactly I was looking at was a immense way to test what I knewMost ornithology courses require labs along with paper material. As a lab I dissected an owl pellet (which as I was looking finished my folder, I do not think I included a copywhoops That is why its attached along with a new table of contents). As a second lab, I learned to identify species of North American birds through a quiz provided by Cornell. It showed a ten second film clip of a bird and you would have to type in its unwrap (no multiple choice).Finally, as the cherry on top, I rev ise a report on ivory-billed nebs I had done as a freshman. The freshman research project was on John Audubon and any topic that related to him naturally, I chose a bird. I revisited the essay on this woodpecker species and expanded the research on the bird itself (instead of the man). I did not bring into being this course as a GPA booster or to earn a class credit, but because I honestly felt I could learn something from it. This course is a lot like sportsyou get out of it only what you put into it. It would have been easy to print off the lecture notes and say I read them all, etc. Instead, I spent a lot of time an effort planning and carrying out this project because it was burning(prenominal) to me, and that is why I feel it deserves an A.