For my textual analysis, I will be comparing the experiments of our lab notebook to biology lectures to see how relevant the labs are to the class. But since I won’t be able to compare the future lectures to the future labs, I will just focus on the labs that have already been conducted and the lectures up until now. To be clear, when I ask the question, “Is the lab class relevant to the lectures?” I mean more along the lines of, “Do the lab exercises’ subject matter match the subject matter covered in lecture effectively?” For example, are the things being covered in lecture also being covered in lab and vice versa? Is it done chronologically or is it sort of random? These will be the sorts of questions I am addressing in this portion of my research.

While looking at all the experiments and the lecture material covered up to the point of each experiment, there is a tremendous amount of disorder. For example, the first exercise we ever did in class had to do with compound microscopes, looking at cells under the microscope, and plant genetics. The lecture that we had covered up to that point had been about how molecules interact with one another because we were learning about the biochemistry portion of the course. My lab partner had a lot of trouble answering the questions in lab because they required some more background knowledge. Thankfully, I had taken AP Biology in high school and was able to help him out. Eventually, cells were covered in lecture but much further into the course. This theme continues throughout the experiments. Almost every experiment was ahead of the lecture and we had to look up more things in order to answer the questions. What’s even more interesting is that there is a portion of the lab where we focus on plant genetics throughout every experiment, and we didn’t talk about genetics until the end of the quarter. Even Erin said, "I'm not exactly sure why that’s happening." So this begs the question: why is it designed this way? Although it’s supposed to be complimentary to the class, they don’t seem to match up correctly. It seems like there might be another reason why this class is important, besides being relevant. Eventually all the material will be covered in lecture but just not in chronological order.