I am so glad that this semester is finally over because it means that all my difficult classes are behind me (for the most part)! I have finally finished all my pre-reqs and will move on to upper divs come spring :) When I did a mid semester update, I wasn't able to make it too detailed since I was in the midst of taking exams and working. But now that classes are over, i'll hopefully shed more light on both MCB 102 and Bio 1B.
MCB 102: Final grades came out a few days ago and I ended up with a B in the class, which I consider an accomplishment haha. I wasn't sure how this class was going to turn out. Like I mentioned in a previous post, the class is separated into three sections. The first section is taught by Thorner who, out of the three, is the most engaging lecturer. His section was on proteins and enzymes. Beware, his lectures are deceptively simple. He goes over the concepts in class but not the finer details that he tests on. For that, make sure to read the book. I got a 48% on his midterm, with an average of around 55% (each midterm is 100 points, with discussion being 33 points, so 333 points total for the class). I was really depressed about my score and started getting nervous about whether or not I would get a C in this class (since each midterm is weighted the same, with the "final" being the third midterm). The second section of the course was taught by Krantz, and his section focused on metabolism. His section is purely memorization. He packs so much information into his lecture slides that he has to go super fast in order to cover them all. Even so, he ends up just reading the lecture slides with a few added comments here and there. I didn't find going to his lectures very useful, but I went anyway. In the end, I ended up just going over the slides again and again as well as drawing the cycles over and over again. No need to read the book. I got a 65% on his midterm, with the average being around 54% I believe. So better than the first one, but still not good enough for me to get out of the danger zone, being so close to the B/C edge. The third section was taught by Zusman, who focused on DNA replication, transcription, translation, and all that stuff you learned in Bio 1A. It's difficult to hear him because he speaks so softly so sit near the front if you want to take notes. He's the only one of the three that provides you with a reader of the lecture slides, although he also posts the slides up on bspace (however, i recommend getting the reader since it has a practice exam in the back and all the notes are bound together). I kind of have mixed feelings about his lectures. Most of the time, he just reads over his lecture slides but sometimes he adds comments that help to clarify some of the concepts. His lectures can be interesting though because he shows videos in class of the news that relates to the lecture topic. His exam was very experiment-based, so I think working in a lab gave me a slight (very slight) advantage. For instance, some questions asked you to design an experiment that would allow you to determine this or that. Other questions gave you a scenario and asked why it didn't work, etc. I don't know how well I did on that midterm or what the average was, but I'm guessing I did ok seeing as how it pulled my grade up quite a bit. For discussion, we had two pop quizzes for each section, with one quiz grade dropped in the end (6 points each). The extra three points were for participation.. I averaged a B- on my quizzes I think..
Overall, MCB 102 was difficult, but not the most difficult prereq in my opinion. Personally, I had a harder time in physics 8B haha. However, the grading for this class was the toughest I've encountered at cal since there was no 'final' worth more points than the midterms to give you an extra boost at the end. Having three equally weighted exams making up most of your grade meant that it would have been hard to recover from one bad midterm... Luckily, there was no cumulative exam :)
I hope that by posting my scores, future MCB 102 takers can see where they stand as far as final grades go :D (a post about Bio 1B will be up shortly!)
I hope this helps! Have a fantastic winter break and happy Holidays!!
-K
