Along the top, you will find a link to the School of Integrative Biology, the academic home of the IB Honors program. Besides the total coolness of SIB, you should be familiar with the SIB pages because they contain a significant amount of info highly relevant to getting you out of here.
To the right of that, you will find the "rogues gallery", a collection of five species chosen for their biological interest - actually, their weirdness - or some of their qualities that make us question our ideas about how life works. The IB 271 course, Organismal Biology, is a comprehensive look at how to be an organism, but no course can ever do justice to all the possibilities.
To the left of this text is a menu, obviously, with links expected to be of interest now, and for much of the year. The UIUC calender and the Jobs link are particularly important. Or, if you are looking at IB Honors as a possible home for you, the FAQs are a good place to start.
And to the right, you will find the "main story"... the feature that will essentially "define" each issue.
Throughout the year, this column will highlight courses that will be taught next semester, opportunities available to IB Honors students (and others) and much more. The main story may highlight individual students and their research, or issues significant to our lives and times. Enjoy.
The University experience is about learning new things, embracing new concepts, experiencing new ways of life. And most of all, it is about discovering a driving interest and pursuing it with passion.
And if that doesn't sound pedantic enough, here's the take home message - go to sleep.
OK, I know there are just never enough hours in the day, what with courses, and parties, and volunteering, and campus organizations, and partying, and lab work, and partying.
I am also really well aware of how cool it is to wear that badge of honor, to go through that right of passage - sleep deprivation. It is just so braggable - how you stayed up til 4 a.m. working on that report or studying for that test, along with all of your friends in the IB Honors rooms.
But oddly enough, no matter how manly, or womanly, or adultly an overwhelming sleep debt seems in concept, almost no one is physiologically capable of functioning on four hours of sleep a night. Even, or especially, biology students ought to be able to grasp this. For some perfectly good reason, all studies of functioning with sleep dep show the same thing - it degrades all capacities, reduces all performance. It costs grade points and, frankly, is completely capable of keeping you out of med and grad school, or seriously degrading your choices of schools.
So this is a plea, if you have a passion, if you have a goal, go for it full bore. But don't do it by building a brick wall that you have to drive through to reach it. Forget how cool it seemed to be sleep deprived. Go to bed.