Genetics

 This blog is a bit late due to personal problems I informed the professor of. For this post we were asked to reflect on the things we have learned throughout our academic career. My academic career has been a long and winding road, and I switched my field from missionary work (it was a christian college, and I became agnostic after the second year) to psychology and then went back for a biology degree. When I began my academic career, I had multiple misconceptions. What I knew of genetics was nearly nothing. I went to a private christian high school, and they did not speak favorably of things like evolution. A great deal of my early college career was spent unlearning all of the nonsense my high school teachers had taught me. What I knew of mutation came from X-Men comic books and the Saturday morning cartoon. This meant I thought it completely possible that one gene could give someone the ability to hurl lightning from their fingertips while granting someone else the ability to stick to walls. When I returned to college for my biology degree I had read many other things, so I had a better grasp on both genetics and mutation. One thing that still puzzles me is how various mutagens work, such as nicotine. As someone of Native American descent who has attended multiple stomp dances, I have been around people partaking of tobacco, both in smoke form and through "the black drink" we would drink after a night of dancing around a fire. With that much mutagen being partaken of, I would think there would be more instances of cancer among other things (there is a lot of lung cancer, but I would think there would be more stomach cancer in the population as well).