Well, I am finally finished the craziest part of my school year (minus exams). Just one more midterm (Geography, obviously), and two more essays, and I’m done – but at least all that stuff is spaced out now, unlike the craziness that was the last two and a half weeks. In case anyone is interested, here are the updates on Molecular Biology 2 and Geography (though they are not very happy updates)…

Molecular Biology 2

So if you recall, this is the course where I got 60% on my first midterm. I was actually pretty well prepared for the second midterm, which took place this past Monday. My friends and I had a copy of last year’s second midterm for this course, and I found it pretty easy, so I was stoked to ace this midterm and try and get my mark up.

Unfortunately, I got a rude awakening. Not only were the multiple choice questions significantly harder, but the short answer questions were quite unpleasant. While last year’s short answer questions were very straight forward, this year’s questions were pretty vague (by the way, just want to make clear that I’m not complaining that last year’s test was different, because the professor obviously has no obligation to make this year’s test like previous year’s). While pretty vague means it’s difficult to outright fail the question, it also makes it difficult to do well. It’s sort of like an essay question – a lot of it depends on what the marker thinks of your answer. And again, like the first midterm, 90%+ of what I studied was absolutely useless.

In my opinion, I think how do you do on a test should have a decent correlation to how well you prepared. It won’t be perfect of course, but I think this test was ridiculously uncorrelated, and my friends and I spent thirty minutes after the midterm in a circle pretty much agreeing on how ridiculous it was. It sucks, but oh well, I’m going to try and be optimistic.

Geography Re-Re-Re-Midterm

So it wasn’t until yesterday that the professor finally posted this note about our midterm:

For those of you who were affected by a fire alarm during the rewrite of the rewrite of midterm on Friday, April 17th, another rewrite will be administered this Friday (May 1, 2009) in your regularly scheduled tutorial.

If these rewrites are disrupted due to a fire alarm, all of the impacted students will be required to take an oral exam with the professor.

Well, not much to say about this except that I’d rather not do an oral exam, unless that meant I would just have to recite my essay instead of writing it (which I’m okay with, since that’s faster than writing). But if it’s her quizzing me on random stuff, that would not be fun. In any case, if this happens, I am sure a lot of people will complain. But I guess no point in caring too much about that unless it ends up happening. People will get screwed either way, though, I personally don’t think the oral exam is fair (but sounds like a good deterrent). My friend also brought up the possibility of just some random student from another tutorial trying to mess with our tutorial, in which case, it would be even more unfair. Regardless, it’s unfair to anyone who isn’t involved in the fire alarm stuff.

TED is Awesome

But in trying to end on a good note, here’s something cool you guys might like if you haven’t seen this year.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an annual conference that brings together experts from around the world to present short lectures about a million different topics. Their website has an archive of their best talks, and a lot of these are just amazing. As sort of an introduction to all the cool talks there, here is one of my favourites:

Enjoy!

Oh, and if you find any talks on that website that you find particularly interesting, let me know.

The last few weeks of school have been really crazy. The craziness finally ends this Wednesday, but basically for the past two weeks, I have had either a midterm or an essay due every other day. I don’t think I have been this stressed out in the regular school term since high school.

Of course, a lot the stress is due to my procrastination habits. But even if I wasn’t such a major procrastinator, I think having something due or a test to take every other day would be pretty excruciating for any student. But for anyone interested, here are some interesting highlights:

Molecular Biology 2 =(

I wrote several weeks ago that I did really bad on this test, and that I was just hoping to pass. It’s funny how your opinion changes when you get your mark back, but view it in relation to everyone elses =)

Yes, I did pass with a straight 60%. But it felt pretty awful to hear that the class average was 71%, and that out of a class of ~57, I was in the bottom 10. I don’t think I’ve ever scored below average on a test ever, so that was not fun. It also doesn’t help that this grade is worth 25% of my final mark.

The sick thing is that because the test was out of so little (26 marks), every mistake you make gets amplified. For example, for one of the questions asked what would happen under condition A and what would happen under condition B. Well, I completely mixed the two up, and that mix up costed me at least 15% or something like that.

If I get into medical school this year, even if I end up with a 60 in this course, it probably won’t matter. It only becomes significant if I don’t get in this year and I want to apply next year. While it won’t matter for UofT (which lets you drop some of your lowest marks) or Queen’s/Western (where there are GPA cutoffs), it hurts me for McMaster and Ottawa. In fact, assuming the applicant pool doesn’t change, getting a 60 in this one course would likely result in a rejection from Ottawa next year. That’s a pretty sick feeling considering how the rest of my marks are really good. The university GPA system is pretty brutal, where one low mark can significantly impact your GPA.

I have my second 25% midterm this Monday, so hopefully that goes a lot better. I’m just trying to be optimistic that I get good news on May 15, and so I don’t have to worry about this course.

Geography Midterm Re-Re-Re-Write

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