Intro to ISAT
Alright, prospective students. Just by navigating your way to this site has proved that you are much more internet/tech savvy than I was pre-college. Hopefully I've improved, but bear with me this will be my first attempt at blogging.
This site is meant to give students (whether current JMU or prospective JMU) a look into the ISAT program. As such, I'll be giving you guys a look at what ISAT projects, classes, students, teachers, etc. are like given my experience. Given that I didn't start out in ISAT, and have a little experience with the biology and health science majors, I'll try and give some insight into how the ISAT program is different from anything else at JMU.
But how did I get to ISAT anyway?
Easy. I tried everything else.
At least everything concerned with science (excluding political science. no thanks). I started out clueless freshman year, and tried my hand at the biology classes. To be a biology major, you eventually take lots of straight biology courses (obviously), a good amount of chemistry, some physics, and some standard math like calculus and statistics. This sounded fine to me, and at first I really enjoyed the in depth curriculum and the challenge of the course load. Sophomore year, things started to change. I realized that
a) I probably didn't want to go to medical/graduate school right away
b) I didn't want to do laboratory research
c) I didn't want to teach biology and
d) I didn't belong in the major.
I think the pre-med/pre-PA/pre-anything health program(s) at JMU are great, don't get me wrong. However, I found myself overwhelmed by a workload that didn’t even correspond to my career goals. Not that I really had any career goals at the time, but I realized a biology major probably wouldn't get me where I wanted to go. So, I switched.
I never declared as a freshman, so by switch I simply mean I tried to take some introductory classes to other majors during my sophomore year. Health Science was a no go, as it still involved medical careers I wasn't pursuing.
Then I found ISAT 131. A lot of my ISAT friends/peers considered the class just a standard boring intro class, but for me it was everything I was interested in condensed into a class, and better yet a major. I found that ISAT offered area’s of study that were the highlights of current scientific development and technological careers. The ISAT program combines all the newest, most relevant subjects into one highly differentiated, but still highly coordinated program of study.
Next time: ISAT lab's to Biology lab's, and how ISAT is bringing back Renaissance Men/Women.