One struggle that I'm really having with my horticulture class is that my teacher seems to assume all the incoming students have a good grasp of plant knowledge. I technically didn't even take high school biology- I took a middle school AP class (either that or Honors, but I assume it was AP). So biology was awhile ago, and even then, we talked more about animals than we did about plants.
My teacher talks constantly, and often not about the information on his slideshow. As a result, we all have to scribble down what we read in addition to different information that we hear... all in the brief amount of time he stays on that screen. For someone you might think is rambling, he sure can get through each one fast. My notebook contains twice the notes for horticulture as any other class, because you never know what's important until the quiz arrives and it's too late, so you write down everything and try to absorb more information at a time than you can really study.
I have never had to look up so many vocabulary words in any one sentence. For example, the other day we were given the phrase, "Gibberellins can substitute for a vernalization or photoperiod in flower induction" with little additional explanation (Translation: Plants can make hormones to help them grow flowers even when they receive little light). Even the SpellCheck on this post rejects these words.
Most of my notes go like this. In other news, abscisic acid promotes stomata closure in addition to working against gibberellins (which can also delay senescence in a plant), and zeatin, kinetin, benzyl, and adenine are natural cytokinins that cause cells to remain meristematic. That same day, we also discussed the influence of auxins during apical dominance and phototropism, and yesterday we talked about germplasm, acid scarification, and why it is that dioecious plants cannot self-pollinate.
But additionally, my chocolate essay is almost entirely done. I only need to look up a couple of facts like names, percentages, and accented letters to fill in the blanks I left, but the entire thing is structured and written otherwise.
