No more midterms…for now! Hell Week is Over :)

Hey everyone, it has been a while since I blogged.  A lot has happened, and as usual classes have kept me really busy.  Last week was pretty much hell week.  I had 3 midterms, a test, 2 labs, and of course keeping up with classes on top of that.  The way the midterms fell on eachother was just disgusting.  Long story short by Friday I had gone 3 days straight without sleep, and no sleep Sunday night either -__-.  I dont advise this for ANYBODY.  This is really bad, and Tuesday night I planned to sleep, knowing I wouldnt get the chance wednesday and thursday night.  Somehow that didn’t happen.  My first midterm was classical studies that was on Monday. This class is a memorization class, and I absolutely LOVE it.  Literally I memorize, memorize, and memorize some more before each quiz and get great grades. Not only that but the terms we learn are useful for everything, I find hard words in every class that I can break apart because of clst.  The midterm was good, its just that I didn’t really review the history portion, I’m sure I still did well, but our professor has a serious problem with putting the slides on Vista.  She even threatened that if anyone took pictures of the slides she would “walk out.”  This is messed up right?  First of all, she goes so fast, and always seems agitated when people ask to go back, sometimes she wont even go back, she’ll just retalk about the slide… but its like, if your not going to give us access to the slides, then give us time to copy them?!  I actually noticed that I didnt have one of the history questions in my notes, so i probably missed it.  I am going to talk to her next class, because this can’t be right, right?  But besides that, I literally had a Bio Unit Post Test 4-4:50 and my Clst 301 Midterm 5-5:50.  For some reason our Biol tutorials NEVER end at 4:50, she took up the answers when me and my friend left for the midterm.  And my oh my guess what question showed up on our midterm… the solutions were never posted online. *sighhhhhh*

 

Besides that, my OChem midterm grades came out, and lets just say that I am ecstatic that there is another midterm.  I hate it when you do a midterm, feel like you aced it and then find out you didn’t.  If theres one thing I took from this midterm its that the ochem ta’s grade too harsh.  Most of the marks I lost were trivial mistakes like drawing a huge molecule missing one lone pair and getting 0 X__X, and I can’t complain too much because everyone got graded to the same extent.  People actually got marks off for a wrong answer on a question.  Not like you get it, you get points, no, you get it wrong, they deduct!  Like SAT’s, eew.  This didnt happen to me, I got that question, or atleast part of that question luckily but still.  I am going to go slow as a snail for the next midterm so I can make sure I give the TA’s no excuse to completely screw me over with the grading.

 

For my hell week, the Biol 200 midterm was fair I think, I don’t know why they stick the midterm with so much experiements, like clearly this course is more related to the tutorials than the lectures.  The midterm was late, ended at 8:15 ish, and my Biol 204 was the next morning in class after my Chem Lab.  -__-  By the time I finish a midterm I like to decompress but I didn’t really have time for that with Chem lab and Biol 204 the next morning.  So I just studied Biol 204 that whole night.  Biol 204 is a conceptual course, but loaded with terminology, there is literally so much to memorize, right when you think youve memorized a massive chunk, theres another chunk within that chunk.  If you’ve taken the course you will understand that.  Luckily, I actually enjoy the course, the labs are pretty fun, we started dissections, and compared to chem labs, wheew, Bio labs are a dream, slicing up sharks and salamanders is far more appealing than anything chem lab has to offer.  Well right after my chem lab, I reviewed Biol 204, had a shot of espresso and tried to relax.  The midterm ended up going surprisingly well.  I think my best the whole “midterm season”  I got extremely lucky in that the random stuff I drilled into my head the most showed up, note that there are only 5 questions, 10pts each on the midterm.  People tell me that I am obsessive, but there you go obsessive questions showed up, like knowing Chondrichthyes splits into Elasmobranchii and Holoencephalii.  Besides clst 301, Im certain it’ll be my best midterm, strange as thats the test i got the LEAST amount of sleep, this was my last midterm (friday) 3 days of no sleep.  Chem, I had a good 8 hrs, and made dumbb mistakes (smh i will never forget a lone pair again).  So I dont know, its messed up logic, but I think drilling the stuff 9hrs nonstop before the mt works better FOR ME than sleep… I mean my Physics Final, no sleep, and probably my best grade since Ive been at UBC.  I don’t know, I wish I could find Binta clones and test out different study methods to see the best.

 

Gonna get back to work,  bye for now 🙂

 

Binta

Second Year Update

Hey guys! So almost two weeks of school have already passed and it’s been interesting getting settled into fresh courses, new professors, and being a commuter. Living off campus opposed to on campus has probably been the biggest change for me this year. I live around 35 minutes away from the campus, and I’m glad that at this point I am well accustomed to the transportation so there’s no way I’m going to be late to a midterm or something. The first week I felt very secluded living on campus, especially by myself not at home, but now I really like it. I am naturally very independent so I feel like I can really focus living by myself. And atleast I am not getting ripped off with UPASS! Last year I hardly left the campus, hardly used the C20, so the UPASS was really a waste, I am definitely putting it to use this year 😉

Now onto Academics. I think it’s been clear that I really wanted to make big changes academically. First of all, I know my ultimate goal, and I know my grades from first year don’t cut it. So I really wanted to work vigorously to change that. First of all Chem 233, a premed course, also known as a weeder course (but there seem to be a few changes that happened last summer to change that..the average for the summer session was 70!) was going to be my biggest obstacle I felt. I am thorough learner, I like to go into the details, practice, practice, and go into the details some more. I wanted time to ease into the topics because Ochem just didn’t sink in when I was in Chem 123. I think I did like 100 resonance problems over the summer and like 1000 mechanisms (overexaggerating that one, but resonance sounds right haha). And even now, some resonance problems still stump me! All I can do is practice and do my best at this point. I CAN say that my Ochem professor teaches at the speed of light, and if I didn’t learn as much as I did this summer I’d be discouraged and clueless..and a lot of people appeared to be when I was in class. Did I do as much academic wise this summer as I wanted? No, not really, but the amount I did has really helped me get accustomed to difficult concepts in a less stressful setting(my own time at home without stress about grades). I really advise people to do this. The courses that I am actually taking this semester are

Biol 200
Biol 204
Chem 233
Clst 301
Chem 235

This is probably the BEST workload I have ever had at UBC, and I don’t want to waste it! I swear, I better beast this workload because if I can’t then I don’t know how second semester will go with Micb201(eew). I actually structured it this way on purpose, yeah hard work matters to do well, but sometimes timing and trivial things like that contribute as well. I wanted to ease into the school year, so I have one elective and one lab course, overall I’m still taking 32 credits this year but I’m really happy that I’m starting off easier. After I’m done all my first midterms which will be late October I’ll blog about how I feel about each course.. because feelings always tend to change after midterms, here is how I feel about them right now.

Biol 200
Nice notes, WISH the professor would put up the slides the night before or even the like early morning before. I just bought printer ink and printer paper, and its annoying to go to copy right and have to pay for printouts… The course however so far feels like Biol 112 2.0 ..maybe even 0.5 haha. The textbook seems alot more simplified than the Biol 112 textbook did. Then again, I might be saying that because its all review right now. I have a paranoid way of studying where I read the textbook, re-read it a few more times, then take notes on the textbook, and then objectives….yada yada its a process! Well I could not for the life of me take notes because everything I read felt too much like review. I hope this doesn’t hurt me later -__- I’m sure we will stop with the review material soon, but now we are going into nucleic acids, proteins, so I don’t know when it’ll end. What a weird thing to complain about. There has also been a few problems with some of the clicker questions/answers where they seem to completely go against what I learned in Biol 112. I have to just shutup and accept what this new professor says. I got a clicker question wrong, asked her about it, didn’t understand it but chose to accept it, and someone brought it up in class the next day, and she pretty much changed her answer. I don’t really like those kind of things, Biology can be so ambiguous sometimes.

Chem 233
So far review of stuff I did this summer, so I am just reviewing the book and doing massive amounts of problems to keep up. The professor goes too fast though, I notice this happens with new/younger professors a lot. It’s like their so excited to teach or something, which is GOOD, but I need to finish writing! 😉 I have a feeling..just a small one that this will be my best grade, then again I thought that last year too after the midterm and it was my worst.

Biol 204
There is only one section for this class. The professor is german and has a thick accent, but that is not the problem, half my family has a thick accent I’m use to it. The course just seems to lack structure, and direction. He told us the book is difficult, and there didn’t seem to be objectives, a student asked him and he said he was unsure… lol. And I read the book and literally was more confused about the course than ever. The first lecture I literally didn’t understand a THING the entire lecture! The book didn’t help because its filled with so much non-important stuff you have to read this book to understand what I mean. The weekend following I looked up the course, and saw somewhere that lecture slides were important. *what a bright idea* lol, but I don’t know why I ignored the lecture notes, they are soo detailed they might as well be the book. It’s filled with so much terminology not in the book, that I sought other resources to understand the lecture slides..SMH. By the end of it though, I actually understood the next lecture, and the course so that’s good! He added references to the book to the lecture slides because there aren’t actual readings for this course, so that will definitely save me some time.

Chem 235
I am pretty horrible at chem labs. I don’t know why things always go wrong for me. I will prepare, know every step, but I lack confidence in my skills, and when it comes to chem labs I am as awkward as they come, it should literally be a show to watch me in a chem lab, its a mess, I always leave with a good grade, don’t know how. But now theres a “technique” mark so I’m worried, my first lab was today (noticed everyone from last year, I think WE ALL choose Thurs/Friday for reason…) and though I was so prepared, things were still chaotic. My tap was on too high and my tube came off my West Condenser and water went everywhere. And my hot gravity filtration was a mess, i poured the solution into the funnel and it literally froze before it could even filter, my TA told me that was the first time he has ever seen that happen. -__________-

Clst 301
So far its suppose to be my GPA boosting course, no textbook, pretty much a memorization course which is my specialty. I want to lie to myself that its difficult though because when you start forgetting a course, you start failing it.

Ok mini rant time. Yes I’m going on a mini rant. WHYY do people come to class 20 minutes early? WHy? Why? Why? Why? The place is full when I am there 10 minutes early, and I once walked past my Biol 204 class when heading to the Bookstore for a snack to see a huge crowd at the front..I cut that bookstore trip short so I could get a decent seat. I expected it for the first couple days, but even today it continues. That is UBC Science for you. 😉

And on a last note, I loved this analogy in my chem 233 class. You may not get this if you haven’t taken chem college level. But our professor showed a picture of Michael Cera as a resonance contributor, and a picture of Andy Samberg as a resonance contributor. And then a picture of “who’s real, or that actual structure” of Jesse Eisenberg. SMH it was funny in class, not so funny writing it, but probably the highlight this week for me.

  <—-Resonance Contributors–>

actual structure:

 

Deuces.

Message to First Years and My Summer Studying Plans

First Year!

Hey, I know there are a lot of first years out there reading this, about to start UBC. I remember counting down the days until I finally got to UBC. When you go to a new school it is always a big transition. You are probably that kid in high school who got the best grades in class, and had people asking you if they could ‘look at your homework.’ The biggest thing that changes from high school to university is expectations. I know the cutoff my year for UBC Science was a 92, I don’t know if it went down or up this year..? Regardless you may become the person asking ‘hey can I take a look at your homework.’ Because most students were top of their classes in High School. I can honestly say first semester is the hardest. I can’t really say first year is harder than second year until I experience it, if there are students who have completed 2nd year, let me know is it harder or easier than first year? You meet about 100000 people your first week at UBC. I think I remembered like 5 people I met first week, so it can get overwhelming. I remember introducing/meeting people first week in my courses and then after that no one talked to eachother unless you knew eachother ha. I have already done a tips for first year’s post, but on a side note things to try to mainatin are good, supportive people around you. UBC is a competitive school, and you will run into those few people who secretely want you to fail, or don’t like to help you anyway academically… I’m just saying!

Now as for my summer studying, I planned to study like a maniac this summer and learn the details of most of my courses this summer. Everyone told me, ‘Binta it is impossible to study that hard in the summer.’ Well for the first 2 months it was going great. I went really slow, and gave myself time to absorb everything. For Chem 233 I studied up to alkyne mechanisms, so for the first midterm I should be pretty solid. The most important thing I wanted was a headstart, and I think I accomplished that. This week I’ll be taking practice midterms myself timed, and see if I retained the information well. For Biol 200, it went slowly, I read A LOT. I’ll be taking a few practice midterms this weekend as well. I think I mentioned this, but I got a fulltime job, 40hrs/week, and let’s say the studying took a little backseat. This is the first time I have worked this many hours so I didn’t accomplish as much I wanted to academically. I also had a lot of changes in t
erms of courses so I also wanted to make sure I wasn’t preparing for courses I wouldn’t be taking. Here are the finalized courses I will be taking this semester are:

Biol 200
Biol 204
Chem 233
Chem 235
Clst 301

*Update – I am soooo sad Jackie Stewart isnt teaching chem..she consistently has the best avg’s and did i mention she allowed a GROUP midterm for the summer section -______________________________________________________________________-

From what I’ve heard and seen Biol200 and Chem 233 are the hardest of this bunch. So I’m glad those are the two I focused on this summer. I’m going to kick things into gear im hoping to finish 3 midterms for biol 200 and chem 233 this summer and see where I am at, what my weaknesses are, etc.

And I debated this, because I have a lot of last minute things to do (getting a phone, moving and unpacking) but I will be attending imagine day. Hope to pick up tons of free swag, and of course learn more about resources available to us at UBC ;]

Update

I have not blogged in forever, so here is a quick update

Summer is almost over! My summer has certainly been a whirlwind. I took online courses, but ended up dropping them when I saw that I just didn’t have the time to do well, so I will tackle them as electives at UBC. I worked at an internet marketing firm, and it was a great, learning experience, and now school is just around the corner.

Everything happened last minute for certain reasons, so I JUST started looking for a place to live less than a week ago. This was so nerveracking because if I don’t find a place, then I’d have no way to go to UBC. Luckily I found a good enough place, thats close enough the school (<40min bus/train) so I sent the deposit so I could breathe haha. Now I'm just trying to figure out how I'm getting all my stuff over there without help. *Just a side note when I came to Toronto on my birthday I was 25min away from the gate but thats "late" for Air Canada and I bought another ticket -__- So I really want to make sure things go smooth 🙂 Now on to courses, I've been getting emails from first years, and I accidentally deleted a bulk of my email, my inbox is like 4000+ and i haven't gotten around to cleaning it up, I'm like an email hoarder. So I'm not ignoring you! Just resend it and I'll respond asap 🙂 I don't know when first years move into their residences (Place Vanier/Totem) but I will definitely put up a post about all that and more first year info tomorrow, as well as all my pre-second year details! Hope everyone has enjoyed their summer 🙂

OVO FEST 2011

So on July 31, 2011, I had the privilege of attending Drake’s annual OVO Fest in Toronto. Now this show has been sold out for 2 months, and I didn’t have any tickets. On ticketmaster it showed that there were a few seats, but nothing less than $300 for mediocre seats, but they were only selling pairs. I am Drake’s biggest fan, and I was determined to atleast be at the venue and see him. I went to venue like 5 hours before the show, and was told by the lady at the box office that site I was on was a scalpers website, and that tickets had been sold out for 2 months. So be careful when going on ticketmaster that your pop blocker is on, or else you may be redirected to a scalper website.

Anyways she told me that there MAY be releases, and if I wanted a chance I would have to stay at the box office, and that there was a guy ahead of me waiting. So 1.5 hours later there was a release and the guy ahead of me got two tickets. All I could think was ‘why couldnt he get one!’ Well 2.5 hours later there was another release and I got tickets! The ladies at the box office said they fought for me to get the best seats in the house, and they really were! It’s at the Molson Ampitheatre(which is an unbelievable venue), and I got the front row right above the pit, right at the center! It’s the best view I could have possibly got. The people in the pit were closer but had to look up the whole time, and the stage was straight ahead of me, with no heads in the way. I still can’t get over how lucky I was to get those seats.

Well the show opened up with The Weeknd who is an upcoming Toronto artist. He actually performed really well live, he has an amazing voice. After he did the set, Rick Ross came out, and the whole crowd got a bit more in to it, because he has a lot of recognizable songs. Everyone was singing along, it was great! And of course the next act was Drake! I nearly lost my voice screaming when Drake came out. He performed a lot of songs, and I sang along to everyone, and was surprised how everyone sang along to his really obscure songs, Toronto really loves Drake like no other city! Well last year Drake brought out Jay Z and Eminem to the OVO Fest, so even though the show was Drake with Rick Ross and The Weeknd, everyone kind of expected that he would bring out someone. And he sure did.

While Drake was performing he brought out Jcole, and they performed ‘In the Morning’ together. Everyone went crazy when JCole came out, including me, because I’ve met him but never seen a performance. While JCole and Drake were still on stage, Drake then brought out Nas who started with ‘Made You Look.’ I love that everyone knew the lyrics, I love Toronto! Nas performed again, and Drake and JCole were playfully bowing to him, and they all kind of embraced at the end, it was really cute. How many times are you going to see JCole, Nas, and Drake on one stage? I’m guessing that’ll be the last time with all 3.

Drake then continued with a few of his hits, he did Marvin’s Room of course, and also Trust Issues with The Weeknd. After that, I don’t think anyone could have guessed the next performer. He brought out Stevie Wonder! I saw a piano brought on stage, and thought ‘oh Alicia Keys, they have a song together,’ but what a pleasant surprise to see a legend perform for you. It was great and Drake kind of let Stevie shine, which was really nice.

I must add that Drake’s mother sat in front of me, and was bopping her head hella hard to Drake’s ‘Over’! 🙂

Anyways Stevie ended his set, and Drake started singing, and then doing shoutouts! He first went to the right side and gave a few shoutouts to some people in the crowd, then the left…then finally the center. All I know is when that light hit me, I held my hand up, and Drake pointed right at me and said “I see you girl right there with the cute braids and i think stripes on” ALl I know is that I was smiling so hard my teeth hurt, and it was the best moment ever. Honestly I blame my amazing seats, I knew before the show I was getting a shoutout with those seats. When Drake performed Fancy, the light shone on me again, and he pointed at me, and I pointed at him and sang along, best moment ever.

Drake continued his set, and near the end, like last 20 minutes, Lil Wayne like a ninja appeared on stage, and this must have been the loudest I ever heard the crowd react, including me! Even at the end of the concert, Lil Wayne riled up the crowd, and everyone was jumping and singing along. Epic performance, Lil Wayne is an amazing performer, even wearing the most funky pants ever! He performed 6’7 and Rick Ross came out, and they all performed ‘I’m On One,’ and during I’m On One, me and Drake had another moment like the one before, and my face briefly appeared on the huge screen. Amazing! If I ever go back to Molson for a show, I am getting those exact same seats.

The tickets were 95, and EVERY PERFORMANCE WAS LIVE. (I don’t get going to concerts where the artist lip synchs the whole time, might as well listen to the cd). I am so glad I waited for tickets patiently. Stevie Wonder, Nas, Jcole, Rick Ross, The Weeknd, Lil Wayne, and Drake! What a night.

Q&A

Hey guys, so I have gotten a lot of feedback about my topics on getting super grades.  It’s awesome to see that there are people amped for first year at UBC, and maintaining high school grades like I was :).  First of all, I’m going to answer some q’s i’ve been asked, and some people may want to know!

1.  How do you find all your resources?

I hunt!  The internet is a beautiful thing!

2.  How much did your GPA drop?

Why make assumptions that it dropped from high school?  Haha joking, for my yearround average, it dropped like 15-20% from high school :\  I can say that it went up between 1st and 2nd semester tremendously..:)

3.  Why are you interested in online courses?

Because they require you not leaving your room 🙂  And it still counts for credits, why not1

4.  What would you choose if you didn’t choose science?

Computer science 10000%!!  And a minor in theatre.  These are things I’m interested in, but wouldn’t want to focus on 100% independently.  If it was possible to pull of a Honors in Cell and Developmental Biology, and Minor in CS, that’d be awesome. But that would also involve having no life aside work.

5. How was living in residence first year?

I lived in Vanier, in Mawdsley House.  It was definitely fun!  Being 10 minutes away from classes certainly had its benefits.  But don’t count yourself out if you are a commuter, I found that those commuter students at the library between breaks and not in their rooms sleeping or being random(me) accomplished so much more, and definitely made up for that commuting time.

6.  What was your favorite class this year?

Math 103.  Seems random, and I suffered through it, but it felt better because EVERYONE suffered through it, and I suffered less than the majority of the class haha.  My best grade tied with English.  But mostly because I could listen to music while studying/doing homework, which makes it so much better 🙂

7.  What was your least favorite class this year?

Biol 121 and Biol 140.  Hated these with a passion.  Bio 121 with Greg Bole was just ridiculous.  I actually thought I was solid with the material, did well on all the quizzes, did the reading, but bombed the midterms.  The fact that my family came to visit the weekend before the midterm affected me, but that’s not good enough as an excuse.  I think the stingy TA’s contributed as well.  You could write a page of work, and get like 3/10, and its just frustrating when you word it differently and they don’t give you credit for it.  Long story short, I just hate this course.  Bio 112 is harder but more organized and straight forward.  Others think differently, it is what it is.

8.  Favorite place to study at UBC?

Irving!  Why oh why did I only discover this place around finals..?

9.  What are your thoughts on 8am classes?

Just because you could handle it in high school means nothing.  Trust me when i say you will feel the effects of 8am classes ESPECIALLY around midterms, but that’s just me.

10.  Am I taking the right courses for first year?

I love UBC but they really need to be more informative to first year students.  Many students in first year don’t even know about the online UBC calendar, that you can explore different specializations within your faculty.  So if you see a specialization you feel you want to apply for at the end of 1st year then check out that calendar to make sure that you are taking the right courses first year.  Everyone generally follows the same specialization.

—–

Besides from that, this has been really horrible week in the news.  RIP To all the victims of the Norway attack, and Amy Winehouse, an unbelievably talented singer.  Just one of my favorite songs.

Tips on First Year Courses

I am not posting a whole bunch of tips, just tips that actually worked for me.  So for my second semester my average went up by 7% by making some big changes.  Some changes were probably too much for me, and I didn’t follow through, but some I did, and they definitely helped me.

1.  Check out your classes before hand!  If it’s one of those courses with a lot of sections, try and choose the professor who’s grading scheme fits you best.  Eg.  When I was chosing a Math 103 prof, i checked every prof’s grading scheme, and when I saw one professor doing some weird online thing for grades, and the other doing clickers, I chose the clickers!  And checking ratemyprof is helpful but not COMPLETELY reliable.  It does help you get the gist of the professor.  I really liked my Math professor’s grading scheme, some quizzes to keep me on my toes, labs were 10% :D, etc.

2.  GO to OTHER lectures.  I actually said this during christmas break on a post.  I said it’s something I wanted to do, and thought would help..and it did.  I did this for math 103, only because I couldn’t do it for chem or bio(timetable conflicts).  But even though most people do worse in math 103, i went up 15% from first semester math to second semester math.  So a big jump.  I can honestly say that the extra lectures contributed, especially because I set it up in a way that I was having math every single day.  It also helped to reaffirm things, and most of all, each professor has their strengths, and if one professor was weak on a certain subject, the other professor seemed to be strong.  My professor was Rolfsen, and my extra class was taught by Christoph Hauert.

3.  Go to Office Hours.  Going to office hours helps.  It’s amazing how so many students are in a lecture, and how few of them come to office hours.  Even if you know your stuff, in office hours I was able to find out about things to come before others, and also got a lot of things cleared up.

4. Take practice tests.  I am the queen of practice tests.  I have about 5 billion for each first year course.  So if your a first year in science, and want something that WILL help you, contact me, and I will happily send them your way.  For my first chem midterm I did the pratice test posted online + about 7 others that I had found.  Result:  My highest midterm grade EVER.

5.  Dont get caught up with your great midterm grades…and start slacking off.  After chem I was too confident, and Biol140 started distracting me and getting in the way (I regret putting so much time into this horrible course) and I for some reason put Bio 140 in higher priority and fell off the Bio 112, Math  103 and Chem 123 trains.  Thus my downfall…I did well my second semester, I am very proud of how much I improved.  But I do wish I wasn’t in Bio 140, I have a feeling my average would be atleast 4% higher.

6.  Take some time for yourself.  Sometimes constant focus on work will suck up all the energy you have…and then finals hit.  You want to have gotten the fun out of the way when you have to study for finals.  So don’t be the person in the library from 9am to 1am monday through sunday.

GPA Bumping – Is it so bad?

EDIT: NOTE TO EVERYONE..just remembered this, the average for Chem 233 in the summer was 70! 70!!!  First years out there, if you can take chem 233 in the summer with Jackie Stewart.  *sighh*

University is an experience you remember for life.  You learn in the classroom, and out.  You study hard with hopes of reaching your dream career.  And sometimes your dream career, like mine, requires stellar grades.  These stellar grades are easier to get at different schools.  UBC is definitely not one of those inflation crazy schools.  Stanford for example, is known for having a lot of grade inflation.  UBC doesn’t necessary have too much grade deflation, and it’s not difficult to do well at UBC, it is however hard to do great.  And those people doing great, I applaud, and I think a lot of future entrepeneurs, surgeons, and top lawyers are going to come out of UBC.  Now sometimes if you want your GPA to be a little better, people like to throw in some easy electives in there, and hope that it bumps their GPA.  This does backfire sometimes, your so comfortable with your easy elective, that you forget about it, and it ends up screwing up your GPA.  Chem 123 was this for me.  After my amazing first midterm, I thought it’d be my GPA bump course, but it ended up being my lowest grade 🙁

What is the first thing I usually get from people when I say I want a couple easy electives?  University is for learning, and taking courses that interest you, and enjoying them.  I completely agree, studying at a world class university is a great opportunity, but I personally think, if I enjoy the class AND it’s a gpa bumper then its perfect.  Bio121 was one of my favorite courses last year, the teacher was funny, and I was genuinely interested by all the things I learned.  I learned so much, that I never knew before, but it was my lowest grade.  The whole, ‘you do well in what interests you’ doesnt always work.  Bio 112 on the other hand, far less interesting, but I did far better in the course.

I want to go to med school.  And many people have asked me why I chose UBC if I wanted this.  Apparently, medical schools don’t consider the difficulty of your school when considering grades.  Hypothetically a A at Langara and an A at UBC are of equal value.  Langara is a good school, but UBC is more competitive.  So sometimes I wonder if I chose UBC based on pride like, ‘yeah I go to UBC :)’ But I also chose UBC because it’s a beautiful school, lots of resources, and it’s in a great city.  When I hear that I’m hurting my chances by going to a more difficult school, it annoys me.  So why not HELP myself and take some GPA bumping courses??

University is about the experience, but everyone has different life goals.  I want to be a doctor.  And I chose a difficult school to do great in.  After attending UCLA, I can honestly say I worked 10 times harder at UBC, and my grades were worse.  Whether that’s fair or not is not the point.  The fact is to get into med school, you need to be amazing.  So why not take courses you enjoy and also try and make them easy electives?  Especially when you have the core science courses already dragging you down.

Interesting Thing About UBC Specializations

I think many people go into specializations solely looking at the name, and not researching the specialization heavily, like the courses, type of opportunities the specialization offers, requirements later on, etc.  Me for example, didn’t realize until much later on, that I may not exactly love Microbio and Immunology like I thought I would, and I’m glad I reconsidered it, and looked out for other options.  And I made a pretty starling discovery.  We all know that the more difficult specializations to get into in Science are Honors Cellular Physiology (I think this should accept in 3rd yr only but thats just me), Microbiology (fairly difficult), I’m sure there are others, but those are the 2 I have noticed.  I don’t know what the average acceptances are like for Pharmacology.

But typically science specializations have almost identical first year courses, and similar second year courses.  The second year courses are where things start to diverge.  Except for chem and biochem, typical core courses are Chem 233, Chem 235, Biol 200, Biol 201, and maybe Micb 201/202.  Now Chem, and Bio are the ones that are the most typical.  But for Biology for example, you must take these core courses + a large load of bio courses:

Second Year for Biology
ENGL 100-level or SCIE 1131 3
BIOL 200, 230, 234, 2604 12
Two of BIOL 203, 204, 205, 209, 210, or MICB 2015,7 7(8)
CHEM 233, 235 4
Electives1,2,4,5,6,7 4(3)
Total Credits

As you can see there is only room for 3(4) electives, so ONE elective course.  Also for another specialization that isn’t extremely difficult to get into chemistry:

Second Year
CHEM 201 3
CHEM 202 3
CHEM 2037 4
CHEM 211 4
CHEM 213, 245 4
MATH 200 3
MATH 221 3
Electives5,6 6
Total Credits 30

or Biochem

BIOL 200, 201 6
CHEM 201 3
BIOL 2347 3
CHEM 2038 4
CHEM 213, 245 4
MATH 200 3
Electives9 7
Total Credits

As you can see, each specialization is loaded, that there is not much room for electives.  All of these are not considering honors by the way.  And Chem by the way, or biochem (shivers), their chem >>> chem 233.  Now these specializations all take work to get into of course, but you don’t need a stellar average to get in.  Now Microbio, which is on a difficulty scale, harder to get into.

MICB 201, 202 6
BIOL 200, 201 6
CHEM 205, 233, 2356 7
Electives4 11
Total Credits7 30

Do you see the difference?  Of course there are restrictions to electives, but not enough that you can’t add some fun, easy courses in there.  It’s definitely something interesting I’ve noticed.  The FREEDOM of all the electives definitely looks nice to me right now.  And the fact that they tend to help gpa’s ^^[don’t hate for that comment, a Gpa bumping post will be my next likely]

In terms of specializations personally, I found out I am a Biology student.  When I was looking at courses, it’s when i realized how MUCH bio courses it is.  🙂  I actually want to do honors cell and developmental biology, but you must apply for that through Biology at the end of 2nd year.  Great, more applications ;]  As for now, continuing learning this summer, and enjoying the summer.

Happy Belated Canada Day

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