Happy Holidays from Seoul, Korea! :)
As this semester concluded, I had a mix of emotions from the opposite sides of the spectrum. On one side, I was EXTREMELY glad that this semester ended. For me, this semester was a "trial" semester- I wanted to see if I could handle doing lab and schoolwork at the same time. At first, I was ready to quit- there was no way I was going to come out of this alive with decent grades... But as the semester wore on, I started learning how to manage my time more wisely and started taking advantage of every break I got in between classes: I went to lab on the weekends instead of my usual weekdays when I had midterms to study for, etc. Then as the semester drew to a close, I stopped going to lab and focused all my energy in studying for finals. Now that I'm in Korea and don't have to think about going back to lab and studying for a while, I can reflect back on the semester and say that I enjoyed it quite a bit- in between my complaints and sleep deprived states, I enjoyed working at lab and I enjoyed the topics I studied (although I couldn't see it at the time haha). So here's my bi-annual Semester Evalution for Fall 2011:
Bio 1A: Like I mentioned in my previous-ish post, this Intro to Bio class is like your typical AP bio class but on steroids- a TON of memorization and a lot more conceptual that I thought it would be- especially genetics. Three professors, each teaching a certain part of biology- cells/photsynthesis/etc, genetics, and anatomy/physiology. The class consisted of two midterms, one for the first two sections, and the third section was tied in with the final- so that the majority of the final was based on the third section. For me, the easiest part was the last section, but for the midterms, i did better on the genetics one. I ended up getting a B in the class- not bad for the supposedly hardest weeder class at cal hahaha. People say that Bio 1A kills peoples' love of biology- I can say that from experience, while taking the course, I didn't want to hear another word of biology ever again hahaha. Nonetheless, it was a good class- very detailed and lecture-oriented so study the lecture slides when studying for the exams :)
Bio 1AL: .... I hated this class....
Usually I don't pay attention to the comments people leave on sites like collegeconfidential and courserank, but in this case, they were true.. Bio 1AL is a 2 unit class but it should really be 4 units for all the work you put into it. There are quizzes every week that are really difficult and only kill your dreams of getting a decent grade in that class. The labs themselves aren't bad- the dissections leave a long-lasting smell afterwards though- and the prelabs/postlabs don't count for any points in your grade, but you still have to do them... Then it's time for the midterm... Oh boy, did I want to cry while studying for this midterm. I think I took about 5-6 practice midterms for the real one and kept doing terribly on them! I practically lived in GSI office hours, and for a whole week, I looked at nothing but practice midterms. I devoted at least 30 hours studying for the midterm, but it paid off I guess- ended up doing well on it :) Make sure to do well on the midterm because it's worth 100 points while the practical is only worth 65 points. So treat the mditerm like your final. The practical itself was pretty stressful studying for, because you didn't know exactly what questions were going to be at the stations since the GSI's write them. You get about a minute and a half (I think?) for each station for the first rotation, and 30 seconds for the second rotation (which doesn't help anyway..). There's no time to be stressed out during the practical because it moves so fast. All you can hope for is that you studied the right thing- the practical is up-in-the-air so don't rely on it as a grade booster. All in all, I'm glad it's over :) Got a B in it as well.
Stats2: This was a good class but I didn't do too well on it- for some reason, me and math don't seem to go well together... I ended up getting a B- in this class although it's an intro to Stats class. The material was pretty straight forward and the lectures were interesting. Ibser, in all, was a good professor but I felt like his exams were on the harder side. The midterm average (only 1 midterm in the class) was a D-... worse than the Bio 1AL midterm average hahaha. But i enjoyed the class and I learned a lot about stats which seems more useful than I thought :) If you're good at math, then this class is a chill 4 unit class that doesn't require too much work- the homework only takes about half an hour a week and studying for quizzes isn't bad either :)
English R1B: This was my favorite class this semester, oddly. I don't like writing papers and sharing my thoughts in class, but this class was interesting enough that writing papers and participating in class weren't that difficult to do. The topic was/is Victoriana! and the GSI who taught it- Ben Cannon- was great- very encouraging and respectful of others' opinions. The class only had about 15 people so it was a very comfortable atmosphere, and the books we read were really interesting- Jane Eyre, Dorian Gray, some Sherlock Holmes. We had to write around three papers + rewrites, and one final research paper and a presentation at the end. I highly recommend this class :)
As for lab, I did a whole post on it a few weeks ago so if you're more interested about it, please take a look at it and if you have more questions, don't hesitate to ask!
Next semester, I plan to take chem 3B, Physics 8a, and comp lit R1A (to finish up my 1 year of english for med school) plus lab :/. Wish me luck!
If there's anything you'd like me to write about, please let me know!
Happy Holidays and have a great remaining break!
-K
