(no subject)
I had my MICB 324 final exam today, and I'm pretty sure that I failed it. I'm afraid that I'll fail the course, and my only hope for passing is that a miracle occurs my teacher scales the final, like he did with the midterm. (However, miracles are known to occur. To this day, I don't know how I got 72% in MICB 300.) But despite my failing grades on the exams, I learned a lot in the class and I got something out of it. And those are the important things, right? Right? But sadly, my hard work, enthusiasm, interest, and knowledge count for nothing unless I can "prove" it on a test, and that's what upsets me the most.
The problem with tests is that you can't be tested on everything (yet you're required to know everything), and if you are tested on the stuff you know, great, and if you're tested on the stuff you don't know, you're fucked, and look like an idiot, despite knowing tons of other things that were not asked on the test. (Of course he didn't ask about which porins are upregulated and which are downregulated, and how, depending on osmolarity!)
And then there's the memory issue. Teachers always say that understanding is more important than memorizing, and to an extent, that's true. However, you can not get through a course like MICB 324, where you're required to know what dozens of genes code for, if your memory is shit, and mine is. Seriously, how can you understand what SpoT, Hfq or FtsZ (just to name a few of the proteins we studied), are? You can't; you have to remember!
On the test, the first question asked what kind of phenotype would we expect, and why, if a certain gene were knocked-out. The question in itself is easy, if you can remember what the fucking gene product does. I had to leave one blank, and wasn't sure about one of my answers, not because I didn't understand the course material (which will be the assumption based on my grade), but because I couldn't remember what that one fucking protein does! I made a long list of genes/proteins and their function (I stopped counting when I got to 40, and still have two more pages), and can recall what two or three dozen, at least, do. However, I was tested on six random genes, about 10%, maybe less, of the proteins we studied, and just my fucking luck, one of them is one that I can't recall! I think it would be a lot fairer if the teacher gave us a list of 8 or 10 genes, for example, and asked us to explain six of them. That way, memory is less of a sigma factor.
Well, I should stop procrastinating and do a bit of review for my stats test, although I don't see what the fucking point is.
The problem with tests is that you can't be tested on everything (yet you're required to know everything), and if you are tested on the stuff you know, great, and if you're tested on the stuff you don't know, you're fucked, and look like an idiot, despite knowing tons of other things that were not asked on the test. (Of course he didn't ask about which porins are upregulated and which are downregulated, and how, depending on osmolarity!)
And then there's the memory issue. Teachers always say that understanding is more important than memorizing, and to an extent, that's true. However, you can not get through a course like MICB 324, where you're required to know what dozens of genes code for, if your memory is shit, and mine is. Seriously, how can you understand what SpoT, Hfq or FtsZ (just to name a few of the proteins we studied), are? You can't; you have to remember!
On the test, the first question asked what kind of phenotype would we expect, and why, if a certain gene were knocked-out. The question in itself is easy, if you can remember what the fucking gene product does. I had to leave one blank, and wasn't sure about one of my answers, not because I didn't understand the course material (which will be the assumption based on my grade), but because I couldn't remember what that one fucking protein does! I made a long list of genes/proteins and their function (I stopped counting when I got to 40, and still have two more pages), and can recall what two or three dozen, at least, do. However, I was tested on six random genes, about 10%, maybe less, of the proteins we studied, and just my fucking luck, one of them is one that I can't recall! I think it would be a lot fairer if the teacher gave us a list of 8 or 10 genes, for example, and asked us to explain six of them. That way, memory is less of a sigma factor.
Well, I should stop procrastinating and do a bit of review for my stats test, although I don't see what the fucking point is.