Term One Summary

Currently: Getting home from practicing some Driving.

So, Term One of my University Life comes to a close as of tomorrow. It feels like 80% of the time I spent studying, 5% on Transit, and 15% on Facebook. Speaking of Facebook, many of my friends have went for the “Facebook Hiatus” method of studying Finals. Any thoughts? Is this a good way to go? First round of Finals start on Tuesday for me, beginning with Math. But before the Finals, and before I get biased, I will give a summary of what to expect for the next year students thinking about getting into Sciences.

Chemistry 121:
This class is very deceiving, it starts off with easy course material, most people could’ve probably done it in High School. But then… Orbitals and Schrodingers Equation starts to come up and everything changes. Expect to have lots to study for in the later sections of the course. Another problem I have with this course, is the textbook (at the time of this post). It is a custom made UBC Textbook. First off, it has mistakes in the answer key (which gets posted online, and should be fixed by now) and it also has a lack of questions. My prof always talks about “Oh, its just intuition that this chemical reacts this way”… but how are we supposed to gain this intuition if we only have one question in the entire book relating to that chemical? Prepare for lot’s of studying and try and get some extra questions from books in a library or online.

Math 100:
Everyone thinks that this course is the “hardest” math. That you need to be a genius to be in this Math Course (besides the Honours Math). But let me tell you this, it’s not very hard at all. If you put the practice time in, it’s an easy A. The questions in the textbook seem to be a lot harder than the questions that show up in the Midterms and Exams, but thats for your own good. Math 100 ISN’T the hardest math.

Physics 101:
This Physics isn’t as hard as I thought it would be. The questions are very straight forward, it is easily comparable to the difficulty of a Gr. 12 Physics Course. The only thing that I have troubles with is remembering formulae, they allow you to make a Formula Sheet for their Midterms, but the Final… they supply their own. This sheet doesn’t have all the Formula and you have to remember some (and when I say some, I mean a lot) on your own. But once you got that down, you’re set.

English 110:
For me, this course wasn’t that bad. Most of it was just reading and analyzing, then writing about it. Nothing like writing your own poem, or the like. This course relies heavily on your TAs ability, rather than your Profs ability. I find that I learnt most of the material from the discussion groups rather than the lectures. The readings aren’t too long (for my section), and there was only one novel. So all in all, just hope you get a good TA.

Biology 121:
This course is very “conceptual” rather than “factual”. In Gr. 12 it was all about memorization and know how things work. This course is more about “what would happen?”, “how did this happen?”, “let’s test this and collect data”. If you’re good with Concepts (I’m not) then this course will be easy, if you have troubles (me) it should be alright. This course isn’t HARD no matter how you take it, so don’t expect this to be the bane of your existense.

Alright, well I hope that if any of you “prospective” students think about coming to UBC, that my opinions matter in your course decisions. And for you people who already took these courses, tell me if you disagree with anything, and I will fight you.