Biology is the science class you had in school that was interesting from the word go, distinctly marking it out from chemistry and physics. But what do biologists do? And why do they laugh at the weirdest things?
Well, biologists go through some immense education travails before they get to earn a wage, often splicing down one of dozens of professions, which make up the career path of a biology student.
Many of these professions are actually jobs you have heard about in pop culture, but know little about.
There are marine biologists, for example, known exclusively for the role George Costanza claimed to be a master of in an episode of Seinfeld that featured a dead whale on a beach, moments after our hero uttered that mistruth.
Or what about botanists, like what Poison Ivy in Batman was, at some stage, I think. Computational biologists, who featured, surely, in Jurassic Park; ecologists (The Day After Tomorrow); zoologists (Life Of Pi), biophysicists (X-Men) and microbiologists (who are not just small biologists) also make up a diverse labour pool that even stretches to college lecturers.
What they do: Biology is a pretty expansive discipline so lets try simplify things. Biologists, at a very basic level, study living organisms. Looking at plant life, animals and fish; their make-up, their environments, their effects on other forms of life etc…
What they don’t do: Re-engineer dinosaurs. Sadly.
Education requirements: At a base level, clearly biology is something to be mastered in degree form. After that it’s a case of choosing your discipline and learning some more. Biologists would, quite correctly, consider it a vocation when they ultimately enter the workforce, and as such must continuously upskill.
Salary: Considering you could be anything from a microbiologist to a college lecturer, this is somewhat hard to pin down. So for starters, Hays’ salary guide claims microbiologists can garner around €55,000 in Ireland. But in general lecturers income would be reliant on experience, reflecting somewhat the whole area of science opening up into a world of experience, location and funding.
Below are some jokes that on the whole you may get, but are clearly biology focused.
Creationists, look away now, moss lovers come on down
There’s the standard afro ’70s introduction
An exasperated theory of evolution
Obligatory sex reference
A jaunty introduction to hat-wearing cells
Fire safety in the lab. The small lab. The microbiology lab, per chance?
Reluctant humans, fearing change, while masters of the ocean embrace it
The dilemma that ended dinosaurs’ cognitive thought.
So guess what humans and human skeletons have in common?
And Liam Neeson
Biology class image, via Shutterstock
