When I was in college, I took Entomology and Zoology for my bio requirement. The first one was because the teacher had such high ratings in the student reviews. At one time, I could name all the orders of insects. No longer.
It did seem like just a bunch of memorization to me then. Much, much later, I took an Extension course in Molecular Biology, and what a difference! I still think the diagrams they draw for biological processes in Molecular Biology of the Cell are just stunningly beautiful, and completely blow away anything you'll ever see in a CS text.
But expecting to have those revelations when you don't know how anything works yet is foolish. You have to pay your dues.
It did seem like just a bunch of memorization to me then. Much, much later, I took an Extension course in Molecular Biology, and what a difference! I still think the diagrams they draw for biological processes in Molecular Biology of the Cell are just stunningly beautiful, and completely blow away anything you'll ever see in a CS text.
But expecting to have those revelations when you don't know how anything works yet is foolish. You have to pay your dues.