I think one of the greatest unseen benefits of taking this Princeton Review course over the summer has been a new found appreciation for science and overall human knowledge. The MCAT passages each of the three sections are often excerpted from great works of literature and human writing. I am able to read paragraphs from Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan, then Hemingway on the next page, followed by Stephen Hawking on the next. It is very exciting to me, to see knowledge brought together in this way. In school we often don’t relate classes to one another. Studying the MCAT, however, brings all kinds of things full circle. Gibb’s Free Energy is in biology, organic chemistry and physics and studied at least three different times in the class. The equation for relativity is used in just as many, like so many other concepts. Only slightly more than two thousands years ago, science was very simplistic and comprised one discipline. To be a scientist was to make all kinds of discoveries together. Even two hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin made discoveries now slated as meteorology, physics, thermodynamics, biology, economics, optometry and chemistry to name a few. Now they are in fields so far away from each other, it is the exception to relate things “interdisciplinarily.” To be an expert in any field is of the uptmost difficulty, no matter how specific the discipline. Being a student in this age is nothing less than exciting.
