In highschool I was never a big fan of labs because I did not find them clear. We would always rush through the experiment and then take it home to finish the rest and come up with a report. When I got to college, however, I found that the huge amount of class time dedicated to the labs is a huge help in understanding the lab. I have had many assignments that are made so much clearer after learning about it in lecture or reading about it in my textbook after conducting an experiment that demonstrates it in lab. This, in my opinion, is the purpose of these labs. By having hands on activities not only are we more confident in our abilities as scientists but we are more likely to remember what we are learning. Furthermore, you can apply this same justification for having “labs” in other classes. In a history class you are more likely to remember what happened if you were to act out a historic event. Even if we do know what our results should be, by comparing with neighboring groups you can analyze where you went wrong or what causes differences in results. Each experiment will be a bit different every time it is performed. Then, when you go home and write a lab report (instead of learning for the first time–which is what I did in high school), I am able to just sum up the results of the experiment and refresh my memory. The reason you have to use different language in a science report is that you have to make everything as clear as possible, and ideally your experiment should be reproducible by another scientist just from looking at your report. This may lead to confusion if certain terminology or cultural phrases were included in the report.