OPED: Zobot’s creepy-crawly project seems unfair to some
By Kate Lee,
Bluedevilhub.com Staff–
The Zoology and Botany (or Zobot) class at Davis High is often known for two things: the bug project and the Catalina trip. The Zobot class at Da Vinci Charter Academy gets to go on the same Catalina trip, however their version of the bug project is a leaf-collecting project, which is a huge injustice.
Both schools’ classes get to go on the same four-day, three-night Catalina trip filled with hiking, swimming and all sorts of fun activities. So why are the DHS kids running around with butterfly nets to catch and freeze creepy-crawlies while the Da Vinci kids pluck leaves off of plants?
DHS students have to catch at least 40 bugs from 11 different orders and freeze them. Then they take these newly-dead bugs and pin them to a piece of Styrofoam, and let the bugs dry for a day or two before labeling them.
While their counterparts at Da Vinci still have to collect 40 different types of leaves and put them through a pressing process before labeling them in a little book they make, bugs and leaves are simply not on the same level.
First of all, bugs are way harder to catch. Leaves typically don’t fly or crawl away, and if that so happened to be the case, you could just pluck another one off that same plant.
And if you mess up on a bug during the freezing or pinning process, it’s a lot harder to recover. You have to find and catch the same bug again. If you screw up a leaf, you can return to that tree or bush and take a new one.
But the most important reason that I would prefer catching leaves over bugs is that leaves are a whole lot less scary and gross. Leaves don’t bite. Leaves don’t sting. Leaves don’t have creepy legs, bulging eyes, or freaky antennae. My first instinct when I see a leaf isn’t to smash it.
If the DHS bug project was a leaf project, I wouldn’t hesitate to take Zobot. However, bugs and I don’t get along–even ladybugs hate me.
The obvious solution to avoiding the bug project would be not to do Zobot. But that puts the Catalina trip out of reach too… It’s awfully unfair that the Da Vinci bug-haters would get to go on the same trip that DHS bug-haters would be missing out on.
