Posted by alexandra_k on November 15, 2014, at 17:11:57
In reply to Re: balance, posted by alexandra_k on November 12, 2014, at 21:28:47
i will need to do significantly better next year to have a chance of entry to medicine. they won't make the grade cut-off public... and of course people aren't very likely to want to fess up to having the distinction of only just scraping in with the lowest possible marks... apparently someone or other got in on something between an A- and an A average (for the core 4 papers). but they could have kicked *ss at the UMAT and the interview... most people seem to think that 8 or 8.25 (so 4 A's or 3 A's and an A+) is more like it... for the non-rural non-maaori and pacific islander applicants, at any rate. it really is so very hard to say...
i'm feeling quite good about biology. because i'm really enjoying reading the textbook. to start with i was a bit grumpy it wasn't Marieb, because i enjoyed Marieb from tech. But now i really love Tortora. I think it is better than Marieb (or what I remember from Marieb) with a more clinical focus. Every time I get to a part and I think about all the medical conditions I've faintly heard of involving this or that... There is bound to be a clinical box briefly going over it. So... And I know the textbook goes into heaps more detail than we will need. Somehow... That helps me feel that what we do need to learn is more manageable.
I'm also thinking... One of the things that I think really helped me for psychology was the fact that I enjoyed learning from the textbooks. In the tests / exams you would get the odd question that seemed genuinely ambiguous. And I'd go with my gut. Then later... I'd find that the angle or focus or emphasis of the textbook was driving my gut. And my gut was right. I've looked at some past bio exams and again, there seem to be quite a few genuinely ambiguous questions. E.g., hard to say which structure that line is pointing to on the diagram. Anyway... It is common for students to complain that various of the questions are ambiguous... It is also common for students to pronounce that you don't need to buy the textbooks because they got through the year just fine without even opening theirs. Maybe if they opened them they would have resolved the ambiguous questions better than chance! Perhaps... That is my theory for now, at any rate. The histology pics on the text / exam... I think they picked them out of the non-histology parts of the textbook (beyond prescribed reading, even)...
I may not pronounce this theory too loudly.
I'm mostly feeling good about next year because the courses are much more genuinely interesting to me and I know they put a great deal of time and thought into their contents etc. That means they present the information much more clearly and the information is much more likely to be a manageable chunk. They won't be assuming that we are lazy and stupid students...
I spent about 4 hours learning the content of the first embryology lecture. That seems like a lot of time, to me. But I have never done any embryology before and there are too many xxxblast and blastxxx names to try and get straight and lots of things have 2 names and instead of making it clear when 2 names are synonymous they will introduce a structure with one name and then go on to use another and you have to go on a bit of a hunt to figure out whether they are referring to the same or different things aaaargh... anyway... I enjoyed it. And it means... I have a good chance of following along in the lecture since most of it will be familiar and I'm much more likely to remember stuff from the lecture since I have the basic structure to hang the new content onto.
It is common for people to complain that parts of biology are content heavy. But then, it is also common for people to pronounce that you don't need High School Biology because biology isn't hard, really. Anyway... One guy said he did really well in High School Biology and he thinks it really did help because it gave him more time for other courses when other people had to put in a significant number of hours learning about translation and transcription and miosis and mitosis... Campbell's Biology does go on... But there is a single chapter from Tortora which is probably more than we need to know... So... And I'm enjoying it all now, which is great.
Anyway... I think I won't do summer school because it doesn't finish until a week before things start. And I do want to be fresh... I'll just gatecrash some of the lectures... Since the lungs are pistons and all... Sigh.
I better get into health science next year. please oh please oh please. They let me into the degree 2x before because I had a Masters... I've still got my freaking Masters ffs... they better let me in!!!
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1058481
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20141012/msgs/1073491.html