Struggling in biology—how will it look?

[Kurk]

My first semester of college was going pretty well up until recently. I was on an upward trend in all of my classes—except biology.

There is a very strong chance at this point that I could end up with a C+/B- for the semester (depending on how bad I did on the last exam) which would absolutely devastate my chances of making it on the Dean's list in addition to carrying a great degree of humiliation on my shoulders.

I only have the final left to salvage my grade, so my question is, how will the grade in this class be perceived by dental schools in comparison to getting a similar grade in say calculus or chemistry? I would think that a bad grade in calc or chem wouldn't be nearly as devastating as in bio given that a good majority of dental school is biology memorization whereas math isn't used.

I have until the end of the week to withdraw from the class (again, I don't know the extent of the damage on this last exam), so please help me out. I'm scheduled for Bio 2, but will consider retaking the first sequence if necessary.

My other projected grades (optimistic) :
Chem and Bio Labs: A-/A
Chem lecture: A-
Psych: A
English: A-/A

TL;DR Stop here



My rant to get this off my chest:

I don't know if I'm doing poorly in Biology because I hate it with a passion or if I hate it because I'm doing poorly.

I believe that I'm doing poorly due to the overwhelming amount of content in the class. Cambell's Bio is a helluva book and I can't find the time to thoroughly read everything through. There lies my weakness. My brain needs to understand the complete picture with all of the details to remember it all for the exam; otherwise it just discards the info as being irrelevant. What my prof lectures on and what the book goes into detail on are two different things, but I can't just ignore the book. It's not in my character or nature. I study in advance, but this best describes my state of mind whenever I'm "studying" for this class:


I hate bio lab too, but at least it's a 1 credit class so I manage it okay. I'm so glad that I only have to struggle through one more semester of this crap, but I know that dental school isn't going to be any easier. I'm considering switching my major to chemistry just to get out of taking a third sequence of bio required for the major. To add to the hate, I also cannot stand the people in biology; the professors, the students, everyone. Everyone is either half-assing the class (worse than me) or they're an extremely pretentious pre-med. Oh my I can not stand the pre-meds. They all speak to me in a patronizing tone and I thought I was an arrogant person before meeting them. The snobbiness is on John Hopkin's level no joke. I hate biology. I hate it with a passion. I use that hate to drive me through it. Eugh.

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[jttzz112]

My first semester of college was going pretty well up until recently. I was on an upward trend in all of my classes—except biology.

There is a very strong chance at this point that I could end up with a C+/B- for the semester (depending on how bad I did on the last exam) which would absolutely devastate my chances of making it on the Dean's list in addition to carrying a great degree of humiliation on my shoulders.

I only have the final left to salvage my grade, so my question is, how will the grade in this class be perceived by dental schools in comparison to getting a similar grade in say calculus or chemistry? I would think that a bad grade in calc or chem wouldn't be nearly as devastating as in bio given that a good majority of dental school is biology memorization whereas math isn't used.

I have until the end of the week to withdraw from the class (again, I don't know the extent of the damage on this last exam), so please help me out. I'm scheduled for Bio 2, but will consider retaking the first sequence if necessary.

My other projected grades (optimistic) :
Chem and Bio Labs: A-/A
Chem lecture: A-
Psych: A
English: A-/A

TL;DR Stop here



My rant to get this off my chest:

I don't know if I'm doing poorly in Biology because I hate it with a passion or if I hate it because I'm doing poorly.

I believe that I'm doing poorly due to the overwhelming amount of content in the class. Cambell's Bio is a helluva book and I can't find the time to thoroughly read everything through. There lies my weakness. My brain needs to understand the complete picture with all of the details to remember it all for the exam; otherwise it just discards the info as being irrelevant. What my prof lectures on and what the book goes into detail on are two different things, but I can't just ignore the book. It's not in my character or nature. I study in advance, but this best describes my state of mind whenever I'm "studying" for this class:


I hate bio lab too, but at least it's a 1 credit class so I manage it okay. I'm so glad that I only have to struggle through one more semester of this crap, but I know that dental school isn't going to be any easier. I'm considering switching my major to chemistry just to get out of taking a third sequence of bio required for the major. To add to the hate, I also cannot stand the people in biology; the professors, the students, everyone. Everyone is either half-assing the class (worse than me) or they're an extremely pretentious pre-med. Oh my I can not stand the pre-meds. They all speak to me in a patronizing tone and I thought I was an arrogant person before meeting them. The snobbiness is on John Hopkin's level no joke. I hate biology. I hate it with a passion. I use that hate to drive me through it. Eugh.

I got an F in orgo 1, retook it and got an A and an A in orgo 2/3. Considering I got 6 interviews I think you are absolutely fine in terms of your bio grade. Just keep your head up and try your best.

 

[yaya97]

Aren't you pre-law?

 

[Stanelz]

 

[2TH MVR]

Your threads are amusing. Thought you were going into law.

 

[deleted767916]

I'm a biology major so maybe I can help!
When you learn mechanisms or concepts in biology, it's usually easier in my opinion to see how it relates to the unit/topic. An example could be like disturbances and succession. It also helps if you can think of examples because you can use the examples to help you visualize certain concepts e.g. elephants being an r-strategist.
There is a lot of memorization, but a lot of it also makes sense if you look at the terms itself. For example, in glycolysis the enzymes used tell you the mechanism they do so it's easy what the product will be in each step e.g. kinases add a phosphorl group but phospatases removes it.

Wish you the best!

 

[Medin2017]

Aren't you pre-law?

yea maybe he should spend less time on SDN and more time on photosynthesis.

 

[Life of Pablo]

Dang it, Kurk! I really like your account but you have to keep your story straight 🙁

 

[Kingfish23]

Thankfully there isn’t much Biology in law school

 

[Kurk]

I'm a biology major so maybe I can help!
When you learn mechanisms or concepts in biology, it's usually easier in my opinion to see how it relates to the unit/topic. An example could be like disturbances and succession. It also helps if you can think of examples because you can use the examples to help you visualize certain concepts e.g. elephants being an r-strategist.
There is a lot of memorization, but a lot of it also makes sense if you look at the terms itself. For example, in glycolysis the enzymes used tell you the mechanism they do so it's easy what the product will be in each step e.g. kinases add a phosphorl group but phospatases removes it.

Wish you the best!

Like for cell respiration; I was overwhelmed by it, but I was responsible for being overwhelmed. I wanted to learn the chemical reactions behind every single step in the Kreb's cycle, for example, to really understand it. My brain has a tough time learning things when it can't understand why it happens; hence why I go way into detail and overwhelm myself. When I try to ignore the details and just focus on the "overall picture" I have to write things over and over on a white-board in an attempt to memorize it in the most elementary way. Now the test is over and my brain has already dumped the info. Worse yet, my class is behind and we're going to do like 10 chapters in 5 lectures so I'm really up for a challenge.

I hate all this cramming in bio 🙁 . I wish there was more time to really learn it from a chemistry perspective. I hate it when the professor says "ignore these details for now" as I simply can't.

 

[Medin2017]

Like for cell respiration; I was overwhelmed by it, but I was responsible for being overwhelmed. I wanted to learn the chemical reactions behind every single step in the Kreb's cycle, for example, to really understand it. My brain has a tough time learning things when it can't understand why it happens; hence why I go way into detail and overwhelm myself. When I try to ignore the details and just focus on the "overall picture" I have to write things over and over on a white-board in an attempt to memorize it in the most elementary way. Now the test is over and my brain has already dumped the info. Worse yet, my class is behind and we're going to do like 10 chapters in 5 lectures so I'm really up for a challenge.

I hate all this cramming in bio 🙁 . I wish there was more time to really learn it from a chemistry perspective. I hate it when the professor says "ignore these details for now" as I simply can't.

Learn to like "elementary memorization" because you will be doing that in dental school. And it's either white boards, talking with people, or flashcards (very few practice problems in dental school unfortunately). And if you don't want to dump the info then just study the stuff you learned like 20 minutes a day. You don't need to retain all of it it's not like you will be using taxonomy in dental school (or law school) anyway.

 

[pat63]

you need to realize that you don't need to know every single step and detail of something to get a big picture understanding. memorizing every single step of the krebbs cycle and glycolysis is a waste of your time and you will absolutely run out of time. Please understand that bio 101 is meant to give you an introduction to these things. You will go into detail on all these processes in higher level courses (cell bio, genetics, anatomy, biochemistry)- save yourself time and stress. Don't go tackling every topic in unnecessary detail in biology 101 .

 

[deleted767916]

you need to realize that you don't need to know every single step and detail of something to get a big picture understanding. memorizing every single step of the krebbs cycle and glycolysis is a waste of your time and you will absolutely run out of time. Please understand that bio 101 is meant to give you an introduction to these things. You will go into detail on all these processes in higher level courses (cell bio, genetics, anatomy, biochemistry)- save yourself time and stress. Don't go tackling every topic in unnecessary detail in biology 101 .

I also agree with this post; sorry I skimmed through and didn't realize it was an introductory level course. I'm currently taking biochem at the 300 level so I have to memorize every single step and its reactants. Biochem is required for many dental schools so you're gonna learn it eventually lol.

 

[tarheel2017]

It's so hard to figure out if Kurt is the ultimate troll or if he is an entire freshman dorm hall sharing one SDN account.

 

[Iroh]

It's so hard to figure out if Kurt is the ultimate troll or if he is an entire freshman dorm hall sharing one SDN account.

He's the ultimate freshman dorm hall sharing one troll SDN account.