40 Ways to Know If You've Been Traumatized by AP Biology (so far . . .)

1. Every time you look at a plant you wonder if it is a dicot or monocot, and then you wonder if it's a C3 or C4.

2. Anytime a teacher asks a question you automatically answer "ATP!"

3. You don't laugh at the words sperm and uterus anymore.

4. You never use fertilizer because it would increase the nitrogen in the soil, therefore increasing the algae growth and carbon dioxide content in the ponds nearby, killing all other living things.

5. Whenever you eat the cheese crackers shaped like goldfish, you wonder if they use their gills to excrete sodium ions because they're so salty.

6. On long trips when your little brother or sister has to go bathroom every 5 minutes, you think, "Those 2 million nephrons are hard at work."

7. When you spot bird droppings (guano) on your mother's car you immediately warn her of the effects of concentrated uric acid on car paint.

8. One day you find a bug bite on your leg; you then think, "There goes those antihistamines again" and start scratching.

9. Whenever you stretch the elastic band of your underwear, you think of an unsaturated phospholipid membrane.

10. Unzipping anything makes you think of the first process of DNA replication.

11. You tell all your freshmen friends how you had to walk through five miles of snow, waist-deep, uphill both ways to collect a bucket of pond water. And then think, "Poor students", but out loud you say, "C'mon, I'll show you. Whee!"

12. Watching a field of grass on a sunny day, makes you shout out loud, "Man, those Calvin cycles must be spinning fast and furiously."

13. Every night before going to bed you thank God for Rubisco.

14. After a long run in P.E., your tired legs make you wonder how much lactic acid has built up.

15. When you look at a colony of lichen or moss you search for their covered wagons.

16. Every time you look at a kitchen blender a tear comes to your eye for all the bacteria that were interrupted.

17. Whenever someone farts in class, someone has to shout, "Methanogens!"

18. Every now and then you have cravings for primordial soup with crackers.

19. You and your friends periodically discuss the similarities between Siamese twins and a chromosomal tetrad.

20. You stay away from X-rays, microwaves, and slowly burnt meat because you greatly fear chromosomal mutations.

21. If you are a girl and look at your father and your brother(s), you gladly decide that you will never be weird because it seems to be sex-linked.

22. If you are a boy and you know a girl is PMSing, you stay away because you know her hormones levels are low.

23. You accuse all of your skinny friends of having hyperactive thyroid glands and use their buggy eyes as evidence.

24. When you go to the tide pools you sadly shake your head at the sponges because they're an evolutionary dead end.

25. You gross out all your friends every time they eat apples by announcing they are eating ovaries.

26. Two words strike fear into your heart - Krebs cycle.

27. The next time you eat Aunt Jemima's maple syrup you think of the great journey through the phloem it took from source to sink.

28. You laugh at the folly of the sailing crew who tried to rid themselves of sea stars by cutting them into different pieces.

29. Every time you hear Darwin's name in connection to evolution you foam at the mouth, screaming, "NO! The degradation of society! The raping of original thought! It was Wallace! It was Wallace!"

30. You and your friends frequently have heated arguments that turn into fistfights over whether it was punctuated equilibrium or gradualism.

31. Frequently, you use post-it notes to cover up nude pictures of men and women in the biology book.

32. You use the electric can opener just to see if your dog will salivate.

33. When you are bored you try to figure out what lucky one out of five of your friends (if you have that many) are infected with tapeworms.

34. While sitting on the toilet, you entertain yourself with the story of the long journey your food undertook to get to porcelain heaven.

35. A "C" grade on your report card doesn't seem so bad anymore (although your parents would beg to differ).

36. Your parents give up all hope for your Harvard education and years of medical school.

37. You explain to all your friends your irritability is due to REM deficiency.

38. Nobody will ever go to prom with you because of the permanent imprint of the biology book on your face and hunchback posture from the 40-lb. load you call your backpack where half of the weight is the Bio book.

39. Every time you watch the X-Files you begin to side more with Scully, using your scientific skepticism and your desire for more facts.

40. The two letters, A & P, when used together, make you go into epileptic seizures.