So it’s been about a month since classes started, and this semester compared to last semester seems completely different.  I made a list of things I needed to do this semester in order to succeed and so far its been going well.  First midterm was Bio 112, and one of my rules was ignore the cheat sheet, which I did, and I’m pretty sure the midterm went really well I noticed I didn’t have to look at my cheat sheet the whole test, and Bio 112 definitely proves to everyone that biology is not always a memorization course.  I have Spiegelman, who is to me amazing!  So happy he’s part of Microbiology and Immunology because that’s the specialization I hope to get into.  As of now i’m currently trying to rejuvenate my average from the dead by doing really good this semester, so I have a chance at Microbio & Immunology.

HOUSING HOUSING HOUSING

Okay, I have done research on the housing process at UBC.  From what I’ve heard, it’s not so great, and that waitlist can go up to like 4000.  Okay, planning not to be one of individuals that get’s that fateful email that say’s “you haven’t been offered…”  So I opted out of the application, and just applied for YearRound.  I plan on doing Term 2 of the summer, so it works out perfectly.  But now, a lot of people have made me doubt the decision, so I’m just wondering how to get clarification.  Don’t you miss the days when parents dealt with all this business and you just focused on school?

So this semester has been the most insane 3 months of my life.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so stressed about school, and midterms, and finals.  And believe it or not I think my finals went better than my midterms.  I think it’s because I figured out what studying routine is the most effective for me.  A lot of times this semester I heard a lot of, “I just want to pass,”  “just as long as I pass.”  I want to do well!  SO I never understood that statement, 50, 51,52 they all sound bad.  But after a scare with one of my courses I understood the saying!  Imagining having to redo a course is not a happy thought people.  But I had a lot of problems finding the balance with school and fun, and after trying different things out, going through a stage of always eating in my room, and never sleeping but studying, I know in order to survive i need a balance.  I think 85%school 15% life sounds good?  or maybe 90/10, i’ll try and figure that out.  But I think the whole 3-4 hour sleep a night max thing is not going to be good for me for next semester.  Reflecting back on the year I almost want to take all the courses over again because of all the things I know I COULD have done.  Looking at midterms that now appear to be soo easy, concepts that appeared to be so easy!  It’s a nightmare pondering on what I could have done..especially with grades slowly creeping there way onto the SSC.  Here’s a review of my first semester courses.

Math 180

Why, oh why on earth did I willingly switch into this class from Math 104.  I feel like I inflicted personal sabotage on myself.  This course doesn’t have a huge amount of students, which can be looked at as good or bad. More personal interaction with your professor, but the smaller the people the more skewed that class average is going to be.  All I know is I was taking the same final with the engineers, and thats a punishment all in it’s own.  Here are some depressing statistics, the other math 180 class had over 40% of the class fail.  Over 40% people, that means they retake it next semester.  But I’d advise all of them to take MATH 102!!  Incoming first years when choosing a course just choose math 102.  Should it be unavailable detour to 104.  The averages for there classes are normal, not high 50’s-low 60’s like math 180.  Woah why am I saying normal, I think normal is 65, but there averages are around 75ish area.  So DONT DO MATH 180 or MATH 100.  But I must say I lucked out with my professor, he was great, it’s just the course that sucked.  My grade:  no comment..but im incredibly depressed that they didn’t scale it..atleast my grade, doing the calculations I got exactly what I got with midterms/homework/estimation of final.

Chem 121

Almost 2000 kids enrolled in this course, and I honestly think because everyone seemed to be in chem 121 people studied harder.  So that when countless people ask how you did, you weren’t completely ashamed.  Haha but chem 121 was one of my best courses.  Out of all my classes, chem was by far the easiest to study for, not the easiest concepts, but you knew exactly what to expect on the test because it’s pretty much everything in the intergrated book.  The only thing I can say is that the practice tests are very deceieving.  They give us the tests from the previous years midterms, and I gotta say you kids last year had it easy.  The first midterm I got a high 80 when I took it.  On our midterm I got…not so well.  The average was high 50’s, and this is before the quantum mechanics material.  Once again the 2nd midterm did some deceiving, but I was more prepared but made so many stupid mistakes.  *sigh*  who here hates dumb dumb mistakes? Like addition/subtraction mistakes(i got no sympathy marks), or not reading the question close enough?  The final was I think fair, once again much more difficult than the practice test, but fair.  I’d take chem 121 again!  Even the labs were okay..they were amazing compared to physics 101.

Phys 101

The bane of my existence.  Note to future first years don’t let premonitions of a course bring you down before you start it, because thats what I did.  Physics has always been my worst subject, I did AP Physics in grade 11, just so I wouldn’t deal with it my senior year, don’t ask be how I got an A, but I had a lot of help from my dad.  This time being miles away I didn’t have that same advantage.  And this course isn’t based on kinematics like my physics in hs was. 1st Midterm – didn’t study properly, had 4 midterms in a span of 4 days, and another one the same day as physics.  Long story short, my mind was screwed by the time I went in to take that test.  2nd midterm – didn’t sleep the night before..probably affected my performance, but I felt very prepared and knew how to tackle every problem..I did, except the one on the first page that had a friendly message on it.  “Here’s something new!”  all I know is that page screwed me, and with only around 4-5 pages it will screw your grade.  Final:  Probably my best test, felt good with all the problems, attempted the ones that looked impossible, and I think I did fairly well.  Especially when it feels like all the kids who did IB physics are in that course.  *sighhh*  Grade isn’t up on SSC but I expect a fair not bad grade, not A, but not C either, haha.

Eng 110

I probably put the least effort into this class, but as far as I can see it’ll be my best grade.  I’m thinking I need more arts classes next semester to save my gpa from a downward spiral.  *No hate to arts students* I just do better in those courses than science*  I found with this class that when I went with the flow I did better.  On the first in class essay I tried to be bold and do Freud instead of keeping it safe and doing Jekyll and Hyde like everyone else.  Not a smart idea being that it was the first essay I’d written in like a year.  I had a bunch of grammatical problems, but I made up for it on the second midterm and the final.  As for my grade, I’m satisfied.  But eng 112 sounds much more my style.

Bio 121

SMH.  My by far favorite course, and by some freak accident one of my lower grades.  My professor tests are short answer/cheat sheet, and all the others are multiple choice no cheat sheet.  Honestly, I really enjoyed my professor, he rapped the evolution song!  But I feel like the TA’s were so incredibly strict with marking, not just on me but everyone.  And the professor has a really laid back attitude always telling us, “dont worry about the details, understand the concepts, this is not a memorization course. ”  Well..when I go indept on a question and get 4/8 because you wanted more specifics(atleast from the answer key it appeared this way) then you can’t really tell us not to worry about the details, because thats whats on the answer key, details.  This can be such a frustrating course, but the classes are the BEST.  I don’t think I was ever bored in that class.  You learn a lot of cool things, but I think I got the hang of the course way too late.  I got the hang of the final lol.  I think I did  well on that.

LFS 100

Kind of an introductory course, really helpful information, not much more to say about it.

Does everyone seem a bit more stressed lately?  Well Finals are about to hit!  I have my first one on Tuesday, Chem, and strangely enough it’s the one I’m least worried about.  Probably because I know if you study Chem well enough, do all the problems in the CHirp (chem 121 book) then you’ll do well.  Physics on the other hand has become a nightmare.  I try the hardest in that class, and still manage to never meet my goal.  This brings up the option of Prep 101.  Pro:  it’s suppose to fill you in and pretty much teach you a whole course in 12 hours.  Con:  over 100 dollars!  Now I don’t mind paying this for a potential better grade in Physics, It’s the risk that worries me. What if it isn’t that helpful, thats 12 hours of my time I could been studying by myself !?  And at UBC 12 hours is valuable when you always feel like your running out of time.  Not only that but it’d be a waste of money as well.  So if ANYONE has done Prep 101, how much did it help you?  And do you need to have a good grasp on all the concepts before going?  I say this because I know i’ve heard some people say there going cause they don’t understand anything and failed previous midterms.  So if people couldn’t understand the subject in a whole semester how are they suppose to get it in 12 hours?  But in times of desperation, getting prep 101 for phys 101 is very tempting.

Coffee and candy have become my best friends, pulled me through an abnormally long nightmare that lasted 2 weeks!  Midterm season!  Ha midterms were unbelievably brutal for me.  In high school I aim for 95+, here I’m just trying to get a decent average(70+) and thats even hard.  My midterm schedule was not the best.  First time doing midterms at UBC, and I have 4 in a span of 4 days.  Physics and English were on the same day, and let’s just say I think I hit insanity the night before!  But good news is I’m done!  I finished all 5, and though I felt like I could have done tremendously better, I now know what to do differently.  I’ve dipped my feet in the pond a little, and I now know how to better prepare for the worst, and hope for the best.  In terms of midterms, that is.  Though I finished midterms, I start this process all over again in about 2 weeks.

Side note:  Most UBC students use Vista for there courses, and some have discussions.  Some people actually put on the discussions, “study group needed for TOP students, i will need a scan of your midterm grade…”  All I can say is WOW.  Ha!

Anyways here’s a review of a couple midterms I’ve gotten back:

Math 180 – why oh why did I switch out of Math 104.  This class moves FAST.  For a course meant for students with vague calculus knowledge, i’ve never felt so rushed.  Anyways I thought the midterm was fair, I found myself rushing in the end though, so had it been shorter, it would have been perfect.  We got our midterms back, and I was shocked at my grade.  Significantly lower than expected.  My grade was about 16% above the class average, but it wasn’t good.  And I talked to the professor…he said he’s not scaling it. I didn’t understand how I could do so badly, and it was the grading scheme, apparently if you do all the work, every step, but miss a negative sign, your highest mark for that problem would be 1/6.  I’d figure if you did everything, and messed  up a calculation itd be like -2 or -1.  Had I known this before the test I would have tried to pay special attention to each question rather than try and complete the test because it would have made a huge difference.  SO HEADS UP to future math 180 kids, there grading system is bad, so instead of attempting each problem, make sure each is right, you could make the tiniest mistake on a couple problems, do all the work, and fail. And HEADS UP to math 180 professors, tell us this information or put it somewhere before the midterm… -__-

In terms of scaling for math 180, my professor said that at the end of the course when we take the final that all the math 180 courses take, if our class has a higher average than the other classes, then all our grades are scaled up.  Problem with that is that now I find myself relying on the class rather than myself.  Because if I do ok, but the class average for the final is bad, then none of us gets scaled up.  Its going to take time getting use to this grading, cause it makes NO sense to me.

Chem 121 – no comment.

Phys 101 – My grade could have been better, I was below the average:(  Physics is by far my worst course. WHY did I leave my Physics for Dummies at home?! I think I relied on the solutions manual when doing problems that I didn’t realize that I wasn’t really absorbing that much material.  Well now I know, and I plan to go into the next midterm and murder it, dig it’s grave, and throw the corpse of my great grade in there.  Ha, its suppose to get harder for the second midterm, but I find myself more involved and active in the course now than before, so I’m hoping for the best.

Bio 121 – same, I could have done better.  It’s my favorite course so I’m sad I didn’t do as great as I wanted to.  Who here HATES when they make dumb mistakes?  Like you look at your answers and think..why did I put that down?  *sighhhhh*

Thats it for midterms as of now.  I haven’t gotten chem yet..but lets just say it wasn’t fun.  Practice midterm was midterm for last years kids, I got a 85 on it.  The midterm we had on the other hand..could end up with those digits flipped.  I’ll find out Wednesday, and likely find out my english grade on thursday!  Can’t wait…but at the same time I can!