Gen. Bio. hard chapters but not for most people?

[masterMood]

So we had a test today (based on Chpts. 22-27 of the Campbell Biology textbook) and i have to say it was the hardest test i've taken so far. Now I've been getting highe sccores on all 3 exams and the 4th one is the fourth and final test. Everything we did before was stuff that i thought wass really interesting like photosynthesis, cellular respiration, dna replication (ogazaki fragments), structures of glucose/dna/proteins (tertiary, quaternary, etc),endomembrane system, metabolism, organelles of the cell, membrane structure and funciton, mitosis/meiosis, mendelian genetics, chromosomal inheritance, transcription/translation, genetics of viruses and bacteria.

i found all this stuff to be very interesting and i found everything to be very logical. However, the rest of the class (260 kids or so) thought it was very difficult to learn and to remember conceptually, but for some reason I didn't and i ended up getting the highest scores on them.

now the test i took today was on evolution, population genetics, speciation, gene drift, natural selection, darwinian evolution, phylogenetics, biological hisotry (fossil record), microevolution, macroevolution, speciation, prokaryotes.

this stuff seems to be more ecological, but for some reason i found this stuff VERY boring and easy to learn. Now i realized that i hated this stuff, and so i compensated by really grilling myself to understand the concepts and memorize the stupid vocab (which seemed to be all these chapters were).

Now here's the problem, I have to get a 77 or so on this exam to be exempt from the final, and me being stupid i took a gamble and felt that I would definitely get at least a 77 on this exam (both practice exams were really easy). And the final is on wednesday as well, which I haven't studied for yet. I'm afraid I just screwed myself over big time because i have a chem test on monday that i need to study for and that would give me only monday and tuesday to study for the bio final (this is all assumign if i didn't get exempt).

The funny thing is that everyone else thought that this test was really easy and the chapters were easy to learn. Does anyone have this problem with this stuff? It seems as though this is all we will be doing in Bio II, and this makes me feel like going insane because I hate this stuff.

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[dr.buck]

I remember my first Bio class with the Campbell book. It was so dry and boring. Lab was the best part of the class.

 

[Nikki2002]

i'm taking evolution right now and it definitely sucks a$$

my prof made a new nickname for himself: Dr. Evilution

 

[Em1]

The good news is that bio II is NOTHING LIKE that last test you described. You'll go through the different types of organisms (get ready to memorize all sorts of phyla) and the different body systems.

Don't take ecology if you can avoid it.

 

[Slide]

Man I just suck at Bio in general. I got B/B- on the cell and DNA replication stuff. Ironically, I find the plants section, which we're studying, the easiest. I do, however, hate Bio 101. I'm looking forward to Bio 102.

 

[justskipee]

I am not fond of Campbell's Biology book. It can be way too general, and very wordy.

 

[prana_md]

I love the Campbell book, but I'm a very visual learner and I loved the illustrations. I don't think I really got that much out of the actual text!

I think everyone has their "thing" when it comes to bio ... I love that ecology/evolution stuff but it was my undergrad major. Maybe your thing is the molec bio stuff.

ogazaki fragments! hee hee, I never thought I'd be nostalgic about Bio I 🙂

 

[MoosePilot]

That was the same book we used in high school AP bio. I liked it.

 

[DrBowtie]

Yeah the evolution stuff is very dry and boring.

On the other hand the physiology portions are coming up which are cool.

 

[astrife]

Yep... that's the same book I used last year as a junior in HS for my AP Bio class... by far the most interesting topic I think we covered in that class was chemical evolution and how it led to the organism... it completed the puzzle of human existence for me...