Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpp3quce1Vo

It’s that time already!  My first year at UBC is almost complete and it feels like it just started yesterday.  During christmas break I set up some rules to follow for the second semester and for the most part I followed it all.  As of now, my average should see a 10% jump, unless I flat out fail all my finals, which was my goal for this semester so I’m definitely excited… goal for next semester will probably be a 5% jump.  Now as for finals…dun dun dun…

I’m nervous but I’m not horrified like I was last semester, I need to instill fear in myself, because I work my best under pressure.  I found a great way to instill this fear!  I just went on SSC and clicked on that button entitled, “My Grades.”  It was great!  All of a sudden my hands got sweaty, and my heart beat a little faster, seeing those..grades definitely got me motivated to work super hard for finals Ha.  This semester seems to a be a little lighter than last in terms of courseload, but I fell off the wagon a little for Bio 112 and Chem 123.

Chem 123

This year in Chem 123, there was only 1 midterm, which I was worried about, because there was no chance for redemption, but it worked out great for me.  It was my best midterm by far my whole time at UBC.  But it was only for the physical chemistry portion, next was organic chem with Professor Sammis (who is awesome by the way!  should I mention we got ice cream flash frozen with liquid nitrogen on the last day of classes? ) .  I kept up in the beginning but next thing I knew I was clueless.  But I was in the same situation for the midterm especially without grade 12 chem, and I managed to work magic last minute.  So when the time comes for Chem studying (its my last final)  I will definitely go crazy with the studying.

Bio 112

dun..dun..dun..  This course can be extremely agitating, but I love it nonetheless.  Spiegelman was my favorite professor this semester, I don’t know if its his teaching or his maneurisms but I’ll say I was engaged during lectures about 92% of the time which beats every other course.. I was actually in Spiegelman’s last lecture ever, he’s retiring.  Awww, a bunch of professors came in the beginning and awarded him with the Golden Clicker Award.  If you had Spiegelman, you’ll understand how appropriate that award is ha, he is probably the king of clicker questions.  Now as for the Finals, it is extremely hard to tackle studying for it because frankly, its a lot of material!  It’s about 50% of the what we learned after the second midterm, and 50% of everything else we’ve learned.  I’m studying the stuff after the second midterm first just because its so unbelievably boring, that if I study stuff before it I will be too worn out to even look at it.  The incredibly boring topic I’m talking about is elemental cycles and microbe stuff.  Sighh, reading bio is always almost fun for me, but theres nothing interesting about carbon cycles and nitrogen cycles unless I want to go into environmental biology(i dont) so it’s difficult to stay focused, see right now Im delaying reading it.  Anyways I’ve set up a schedule for myself for Bio 112 solely, the next 3 days are completely dedicated to Bio 112.  Im doing the stuff after the midterm first and then everything else for half the time.  My cheat sheet will be done last minute probably the night before-day of the final because it’ll be a study tool helping me sum up all that I’ve learned and things that are still kind of blurry.

And I got a comment for some tips on tackling Bio 112, if you had the course you know there is just too much.  Theres online readings, and book readings, and slides, which gets annoying because the book readings are just like the online readings except for a few tidbits that aren’t in the online notes, and vise versa.  This is the way that has always worked for me.  I read the online topics first, because most of the objectives are answered in the topic notes, with just a couple in the book.  And the topic notes are written by Spiegelman(department?) specifically so its more important.  Then I read the book, which is way easier when you’ve read the topics, then I look at the slides, then I do it all over again.  But the second time around it takes a shorter amount of time, and by the third time your anticipating what your about to read.  This to me is the best method, I didn’t have time to do this for the second midterm because I got behind in readings, but it definitely helped.

Math 103

It’s sad because I only have time to dedicate like 1 day and a half for the final, I had more time for the first midterm…and didn’t do so great.  But I feel like Math is one of those courses you can’t memorize and read till you understand, you have to sit down and do problems.  Its about practice, so thats all I’m going to do for Math 103.  As far as I know half the people in that course are failing as of now, so the scaling should be in my favor, unless they dont scale..(math 180 flashback).