A Bargain For Your Head

This flowchart is what happens when career counselors have a mental breakdown. Engineering? Only if you're "good with things." Chemistry? Congratulations on your future as a "fussy pedant." And let's not forget Computer Science, perfect for those who prefer "slow, indirect evil" over the more efficient varieties. The beautiful part is how it nails the existential crisis of every STEM student. "Why do you want to major in a STEM field?" Options include "curiosity" (adorable), "to save the planet" (delusional), or my personal favorite, the dawning realization that STEM was supposed to involve actual plants for Biology majors. After 30 years of teaching, I can confirm this is approximately 87% accurate. The missing 13% is the path where you choose your major based on which department has the least uncomfortable chairs in the lecture hall.

The irony of the Krebs cycle - possibly the most memorized pathway in biochemistry - being something "no one remembers." Every biology student has spent countless hours drawing those eight steps on exam papers, only to promptly delete the information from their brain the second the test ends. The citric acid cycle keeps our cells alive but can't seem to stay alive in our memory banks. Nature's ultimate metabolic pathway, forgotten faster than the mitochondria can produce ATP.

What you're looking at is the chemical name for titin, the largest known protein in the human body. At 189,819 letters, it's so long that grad students who try to pronounce it typically finish their PhDs before reaching the end. The protein itself helps muscles contract, but its name could probably cause muscle strain just by trying to read it. Scientists clearly had too much free time when naming this one—or maybe they just wanted to ensure job security by creating words only they could pronounce.

The crushing reality of biology students everywhere! Spending hours memorizing the Krebs cycle only to forget it immediately after the exam. Frantically trying to remember if mitosis comes before meiosis while someone assumes you're the next Darwin. Meanwhile, your lab notebook looks like it was written by a caffeinated squirrel, and you're still not sure if that thing under the microscope was a cell or just a smudge on the lens. Intelligence? No, just pure survival instinct and an unhealthy relationship with flashcards!

The ultimate biological cheat sheet! DNA is diligently writing the genetic instructions while RNA is just peeking over like "I'll have what he's having!" This is literally transcription in action - DNA doing all the hard work creating the master blueprint, while RNA swoops in, copies the answers, and then runs off to the ribosome to take all the credit for protein synthesis. The molecular equivalent of copying homework five minutes before class starts! And just like that student, RNA gets away with it every single time in every cell of your body. Talk about the perfect crime!

Size matters in biology, apparently. The meme perfectly captures the scientific hierarchy based on what you study - from the tiny bacteria to entire ecosystems. Microbiologists think they're buff because they can identify 37 strains of E. coli , biologists flex with their knowledge of organ systems, but macrobiologists? Those ecosystem-studying behemoths don't even fit in the lab doorways. My PhD advisor was a macrobiologist. Still can't use regular-sized pipettes to this day.