I have had dreams of being a zoologist since my sophomore year of high school. I yearned for the feeling of going and exploring exotic lands across the world looking for rare and unknown species of animals. I desired to plot out elaborate experiments and mass studies based around answering some of Man's many questions about the natural world. While I currently have not been able to do anything close to that, and have discovered that a lot of zoology work is doing reports and messing around with excel spreadsheets, I am still glad of my career choice.

The big issue now, though, is that, unfortunately, you don't do a lot of animal-related classes until your junior and senior years. That means you have to do almost three years, and spend thousands of dollars, on prerequisite biology classes until you have the option to find out if you actually like doing animal science work. Now this might just be me, but that sounds like a terrible system of doing things. I understand the point of those other science classes, and I do think they are important since they go over concepts that anyone in a biology related field needs to learn, but some of the order of things doesn't make sense. Evolution and ecology are important, but I'm pretty sure I could understand the science behind reptile phenotypes without taking them. Its sad that how much of a treat it is to actually talk about animals in some of these classes because of how infrequently they are brought up.

You also have other, non-biology science classes that you are forced to take. Sixteen credits worth of chemistry seems like a little too much, and then I also have eight credits worth of physics that I need to do before I can get my degree. Again, these classes are important, and contain information I feel everyone should learn, but do I really need to have eight credits of physics? I doubt I need it to understand how birds are able to fly or how fish can swim. You also can't forget about all of the humanities you are supposed to take, and don't get me started on the basic health class that everyone probably took way back in middle school.

It's not all bad, though. There is a decent community of zoologists that can be found at any university, and they are usually very supportive and just as annoyed at the situation as I am. A lot of opportunities can be found as well out of class. Professors are always doing research or animal tracking, and always looking for undergrads who want to get their foot in the door. In fact, you actually kind of need to do this work if you want to actually get a job when you graduate, so it's better to start earlier rather then later. Plus, while I do complain about the plethora of classes I don't really need, I do generally enjoy them as I usually have a variety I am able to pick from. All it takes is some perseverance; those animal classes will come eventually.