Tag Archives: UBC

BIOL 325: Introduction to Animal Mechanics and Locomotion (Review)

Posted on December 31, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Have you ever looked up to the sky and wondered how birds are able to fly? Or maybe looked out to the ocean wondering how aquatic animals are adapted to move effortlessly under water. BIOL 325 holds the answers to these mysteries as it pushes us to view the biological world through a biomechanical lens. This course teaches the underlying mechanics of swimming, flying and terrestrial locomotion.

format of the course

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my experiences with this course were all in a virtual setting. This course was partially asynchronous, as all the live lectures were recorded and available to be revisited at anytime. The midterm and final evaluations were synchronous, however the teaching team allowed for students in different time zones to write their exams at a better-suited time. There are also weekly homeworks in the form of canvas quizzes, which were not too tricky, but also not easy. Unfortunately, the homeworks often had typos or grading errors, but the TA in charge of creating these quizzes was very upfront and honest about these mistakes. Apart from a bit of anxiety, the typos and grading errors were usually corrected, resulting in grading of the homework being fair overall.

Even though it is a biology-classified course, it would be more appropriate to think of it as a physics course accompanied by biological examples. As such, the course is very math intensive; however one would not need any mathematical knowledge beyond basic algebra and trigonometry to be successful in this course.

GPA 🙂 or 🙁

There is alot of material in this course, but I would classify this as a slightly GPA boosting course. Even though the homework (worth 20% of the mark) can take a long time to finish, all the answers are basically in the slides and it is not unreasonable to get full marks for this portion of the grade (lowest two homework gets dropped!). The midterms were closed book, invigilated and worth 20% each. The first midterm was extremely hard and time-constrained. This was due to the fact that it was the first time the teaching team had administered an online exam. Fortunately, they recognized this and implemented a policy where they would only take the score of the highest midterm. The second midterm was much easier, and I suspect this was the midterm score most people kept. The final exam was the same difficulty and format as the second midterm. The average for my class ended up being pretty high; 78!

Credits: ubcgrades.com

VERDICT? TO TAKE OR NOT TO TAKE

I would take this course if you’re a physics/math-oriented individual. Personally, this was one of the favorite biology classes that I have taken. One of the main reasons being that the grading is extremely fair, owing to the fact the answers are mostly quantitative and not prone to subjectivity. If you do end up taking this course, I guarantee that you will amusingly start viewing the world more like a biomechanic (eg. I can’t stop visualizing the lift and drag vectors of an airplane wings whenever I see a plane fly overhead).

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CHEM 208: Coordination Chemistry (Review)

Posted on December 26, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Almost everyone has heard about the infamous organic chemistry, but did you know of its counterpart? CHEM 208 is an inorganic chemistry course that covers teaches you the concepts necessary for advancing further into the world of inorganic chemistry.

format of the course

I took this course in 2020, thus everything was done online. This course was asynchronous in that all the lectures were recorded so that they could be revisited at your convenience (even the midterms were asynchronous). The lectures were also live so that those who wanted to adhere to a schedule could also attend synchronously. There were optional tutorials led by the teaching assistants, where they go through tutorial worksheets and the rational behind each answer. Although being her first term at UBC, Professor Nichols has been by far one of my favorite professors during my four years here. She is always willing to stay late during office hours and also hold numerous individual meetings with students. She also never makes you feel dumb for asking simple questions, and doesn’t mind repeating things.

GPA 🙂 or 🙁

This course is HARD. I spent more time studying for this course than my 4th and 3rd year courses. The assessments were 6 homework sets, two midterms, and a final exam, all of which felt much more challenging than the material presented in class. The homework averages were usually 70-80, as discussion among peers were encouraged and Professor Nichols gave many hints during office hours. The midterm averages were around 50-65 even though they were open book, and the difficulty level was around that of the homework. The final exam still gives me nightmares and was scaled up 14%. Even with the scale, the class average ending up being a 70%.

Credits: ubcgrades.com

verdict? to take or not to take

If you’re in a chemistry-related major, this course is most likely required. If you found CHEM 121 interesting, this course is for you! Even though it’s challenging, the topics are fascinating and things become rewarding once they begin to make sense. If you don’t want to increase your workload or you’re looking to boost your GPA, this course would not be what you’re looking for.

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CHEM 205: Physical Chemistry

Posted on July 6, 2020 by | Leave a comment

A potentially fun course ruined by poor administration and lack of communication. CHEM 205 focuses on the fundamentals of thermodynamics, kinetics, and spectroscopy useful for life science students.

format of the course

Lectures consisted of a professor going through a slide deck, as well as in-class practice problems. Conceptually the material was quite interesting, however the derivations for different equations can be quite dry to listen to. There were homework questions which weren’t incredibly challenging, but doing the math can become quite tedious.

gpa 🙂 or 🙁

This is a GPA booster if you’re good at math, otherwise it’s pretty GPA neutral. Personally, I found the evaluations to be ridiculously unfair. For the final exam, it was an EXACT (WORD FOR WORD) copy of a past 2013 final exam. Although this final exam was not released formally, the solutions could be found on CourseHero. Basically, if you had access to this exam beforehand you were getting an A+.

What’s more off-putting is that several individuals on Piazza actually defended viewing the exam beforehand. Their reasoning being that everyone who didn’t have access were all idiots for not taking advantage of all their resources (we now know in these COVID times – Chegg and coursehero is tantamount to academic dishonesty).

Unfortunately, even before the final exam – these same individuals were stirring trouble within the class. After a particularly difficult midterm, they were taunting others telling them that “you wont make medical school if you didn’t get 100 on this midterm” – really living up to the toxic premed stereotype (funny thing being that noone brought up the subject of medical school either … how they correlated performance in a physical chemistry course to medical school admissions is beyond me).

CHEM 205 grade distribution. Credits: ubcgrades.com

verdict? to take or not to take

Considering my toxic experience with my course I cannot recommend this to anyone. In fact, I don’t think things have gotten any better.

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BIOL 260: Fundamentals of Physiology (Review)

Posted on July 4, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Are you keen on learning more about plants and animals? If so, BIOL 260 is the course for you! BIOL 260 is a physiology course that focuses on mammalian and plant physiology.

format of the course

This course is run pretty much the same as most courses. There are live lectures, pre-reading quizzes, and clickers. However, the course is designed in a way that encourages success and the professors (Trish and Abel) really do care about their students. The two midterms were optional and could only increase your final mark – giving you plenty of opportunity to succeed. Almost every single question on the piazza discussion board was answered by the professors or a TA, which is really rare in most classes.

gpa 🙂 or 🙁

It is definitely not a GPA booster, but also on the easier end of the spectrum in terms of biology courses. My only gripe is that they were excessively picky with wording on the exams (I had a question marked wrong for saying bicarbonate increased pH, but not explicitly stating it was a base … but this may have seen super obvious to me given my chemistry background). The two midterms and final exams are a TIME CRUNCH, all the questions are written response so you really have to think and write at the same time. They also really stress on concept application instead of memorization (thus you get a cheat sheet).  Here is the grade distribution for winter 2018:

BIOL 260 grade distribution. Credits: ubcgrades.com

verdict? to take or not to take

It was one of the more enjoyable classes of my third year. I would definitely take it as I found it quite stress-free and interesting!

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BIOL 340: Introductory Cell Biology Laboratory (Review)

Posted on May 26, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Endless reports and hours in the lab; the bane of all Biology major’s existence: BIOL 340. As its name suggests, BIOL 340 is an intense lab that teaches different cell biology techniques, from fluorescence microscopy to SDS-PAGE.

format of the course

BIOL 340 is a 3 hour weekly lab course with a separate 1 hour lecture portion. However don’t be fooled, often most of the class were unable to finish on time and labs ended up being on average 4-4.5 hours long. Since each lab featured a new lab technique, pre-readings were very dense. There were also in-class pre-reading quizzes, so memorizing every little detail was crucial (imagine spending hours reading about the different steps in SDS-PAGE, but then being asked what SDS stands for…).

These labs were usually done in a group of four of five (random partners), and I was lucky to be in a good group. Each group was given a different mutant yeast strain to practice on using the lab technique of the week. In the later parts of the course, we had to run an independent study on this same yeast strain, which was by far the most stressful portion of the course. Continue reading →

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PCTH 325: Rational Basis of Drug Therapy (Review)

Posted on May 21, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Ever wanted to learn about drugs, but in a stress-free course? Well PCTH 325 is the course for you! PCTH 325 is a pharmacology course at UBC, targeted towards life science students. The goal of this course is to inform students about the common drugs used to treat illnesses in different body systems, as well as give a glimpse into how new drugs make it to the market.

Format of the course

I found the format of this course to be more unique than your average science course. There is no single lecturer in this course, instead, there is a new lecturer every two or three lectures. The backgrounds of these lecturers are incredibly expansive, ranging from an anesthesiologist to a statistician, who are all experts in their portions of the lectures! I came out of this course feeling more informed and appreciative of the pharmacology field. Continue reading →

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