Last year I took organic chemistry with a very nice professor. She’s in the department of biochemistry, so naturally she encouraged all of us to take biochemistry. As a biology major, I don’t need biochemistry for my major. I’m not even particularly interested in biochemistry - the closest I could see myself getting would be molecular biology. But because I had done well in organic chemistry, one of the dreaded difficult classes, I figured I would challenge myself. I knew that doing well in biochemistry would make me feel academically accomplished.
So of course the class is at 8:35 am, which makes our relationship strained from the start. It’s tough to learn material when one is dozing off in many of the lectures. But I persist. I went into the first exam in a bad headspace and did not do as well as I would have liked - an 84, 4 points over the mean.
For the second exam, I resolved to study hard and do well. I walked into the exam feeling prepared, wrote the exam feeling calm, relaxed, and confident, and left the exam feeling like I had kicked its ass. And I got a 75. However, I was still 4 points over the mean.
When the third exam was approaching, I was in sheer panic. I started studying 10 days beforehand, but I had a lot of trouble motivating myself to study. I felt like I had studied so hard for exam #2 without any payoff. Furthermore, the topics for exam #3 were vastly discontinuous, so it was very hard to mentally parse. But I studied. I don’t even remember how I felt while taking the exam, but I remember that when I had answered all the questions that I felt immediately confident about, there were still 26 points of questions left. So I dredged up as much as I could - totally bullshitted some. When we were getting our exams back, a friend got a 75 and said “I’ve never been so proud of a C in my life.” I got more and more nervous. She handed me my exam and I flipped it over and looked at the grade. I got an 81. The mean was a 68. I’ve never been more shocked and pleased by a grade in my life.
The final exam starts in 75 minutes. I didn’t start studying soon enough because until Thursday night, I was working on my final biochemistry lab report. I studied some over the weekend, all day Monday, Tuesday evening, and a little this morning, but I’ve had to triage at least 25% of the material because I am still trying to hammer down some of the basics. I’m trying to stay calm. I’m going to try to arrive in the exam room right when the exam starts so I don’t feed off everyone else’s nervousness too much.
Anyway. The moral of the story: don’t take biochemistry unless you like memorizing piles and piles of confusing, complex information AND it’s required for you to graduate.
