<p>Hello, I have received D on my first midterm for Bild 1 Dr. Kiger. I have studied hard and have no doubt that I didn't put in any effort. The avg for the midterm was a B-. Should i drop this course? or continue. I just have no confidence for the second midterm because I have shown effort on my first one but ended up with a D.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>Sorry, I got confused because you said, “I have studied hard and have no doubt that I didn’t put in any effort,” which says you did try hard, yet you didn’t.</p>
<p>First of all, chill. I don’t know if you’re angry or depressed right now (you seem pretty calm in your post btw), but I’ve had similar things like this happen before. You still have until midnight on Friday night/Saturday morning to drop the course, so no need to panic.</p>
<p>I would try discovering how you got your grade even though you claimed that you studied very hard. Getting a D when everyone gets a B- is definitely not something that should happen.</p>
<p>Some possible reasons:
<p>Things to do:
1)Talk to the professor. Talk to him/her and discuss your options. Your professor knows the distribution of grades the best, and your chance to get a better grade. Also, if you don’t know how you got a D, you can ask him/her to go through the midterm with you.
2) If all else fails, you can drop the course.
3) I just want to remind you that these aren’t the only options, and are just suggestions. There are other choices that I have missed.</p>
<p>Good luck to you.</p>
<p>^^Thanks , i meant i did put in effort! Well… i really think i was just unlucky… because i studied both the lectures and the textbook. Yup I’m definately not complaining because it really doesn’t make sense for me to complain about getting a D when the avg. was a B-. I guess i should figure out if im still able to get a b- in class. I’m just really confused as to…how this happened lol… I studied for bio about 5 days before the test : ( i guess i skipped alot of important or minor things and they were just on the test…grr …</p>
<p>Thanks tho.</p>
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<p>I think this is the problem. 5 days is definitely not enough, at least to get an A. How many hours did you study within these 5 days? Just spending an hour or two studying each day from week 1 will get you a lot further ahead. Well, I’m a pre-med student, so I try to get A’s in every class. If you’re not pre-med, maybe someone else can help suggest something, because I don’t know how long other people study for their classes. The rest of my post is just comments on the difficulty of BILD classes relative to other courses.</p>
<p>You can’t just cram in BILD series like you can in normal GE’s. Lower division Biology is far more difficult than any PSYC or MUS class (in my opinion). For my BILD 1 class, my professor was somewhat nitpicky in details, but she made the test really long, so if you couldn’t regurgitate your facts quickly, you couldn’t finish in time.</p>
<p>For BILD 2, I had Professor Berg, who is a great professor, but his exams are free response only. You had to know your facts well, since you can’t just look at the questions/answers and recognize the correct answers like you can in multiple choice questions.</p>
<p>BILD 3 was easier for me, but I slacked off and had to try harder in the end anyway.</p>
<p>i think you should listen to radishrp. it’s what im striving for, yet still havent gotten myself back up to that level of being a good student.</p>
<p>i took bild3 and got pretty terrible grades…i dont remember what exactly, but definitely at least a C or below.
in the end, i think i got a c+? or a solid c. that was with an amazing curve. i dont even want to remember what my grade was pre-curve. (also, not all curves help by pushing up a letter grade, just fyi. do. not. try and bank on that)</p>
<p>i barely studied. i cram studied a week before the exams. went to every lecture though.
and my cram studying wasnt very long either.</p>
<p>i felt pretty terrible with that…but i passed the class, all is good right?
no. even if im not a med student…i just dont think that’s how it should be if we’re serious and want results akin to any standard of good.</p>
<p>i think college is considerably different from high school.
in high school you got an hour everyday of learning for each class.
add in the hw you’d have at least once a week, and all of that amounts to your “studying” the subject.
in college, you get ~3 hours per subject. often, there isnt hw.</p>
<p>so what you’re required to do for yourself, is to do the remaining amount of “studying” time on your own. (that is, if you were to try and match it with high school, i understand im saying this quite…awkwardly. but i think it gets the gist of it across).</p>
<p>reading, re-reading, and re-reading is what’s necessary. doing the hw problems in the textbook even though they arent assigned is necessary (application of what you learned).
practice makes perfect.</p>
<p>remember though, you have until this friday to drop the course without a W.
if youre sincere, i think you can pull your grade up. but if you let this d get you down, i suggest you drop now and take the class next quarter with a fresh start and positive mindset.</p>
<p>A lot of the questions came directly from the problem sets, section handouts and the old midterm. All of these things are posted on the website. For the next midterm, try to go over all of these questions thoroughly because then you will have the assurance that you are guaranteed some number of points on the exam.</p>
<p>I guess I have not taken bio since my freshman year in my HS and I’m a second year in college. But i thought i have studied hard enough, dedicating those 5 days only to bio. Dedicating meaning not just 3-4 hrs. The whole day, and night. </p>
<p>So I don’t think I didn’t prepare for the exam as badly as you guys might assume… But all in all, because of this bio exam, I’m not going to consider science field anymore. I don’t enjoy it or am I excel at it…</p>
<p>Is there any advice/experiences (not just those cliched statements like ‘follow your dreams, do what you want to do, don’t think about other factors…’ ) for a person who’s truly considering some field other than science? I’m a second year, finishing my gen chem 6 C, took bio for the first time and received a bad grade although i thought i had put in alot of effort, received A and B+ for 6A and 6B. Is this too early to give up? I’m majoring in polisci currently but was planning to do double major chemistry. Or should i give up before i go onto ochem. I enjoy polisci but i feel like i’m not going anywhere with this degree only. I thought i was doing okay with chemistry (only based on the grades from gen chem series) but I don’t love this major. </p>
<p>Sorry if i sound bit confusing and all over the place… but that truly is how i am right now… lol</p>
<p>Thanksssss</p>
<p>double post</p>
<p>Two things that have harmed me (my grades) most during college</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Cramming. Even though you say you spent a good 5 days studying, the problem is that you said you studied day And night. You feel good about yourself because you feel like youve ‘worked hard’ but your brain really cant take it. I did better in my ochem class that I didnt study for the final (was screwed with other finals and decided to just sleep the night before instead of studying) than I did for my ochem class that I stayed up the night before cramming in all the extra things I wanted to know. Your brain really needs a break. If you study too long you actually lose information and when you take your test its like your brain slips around the answer but can’t quite get it. Make sure you get enough sleep and aren’t over caffeinated as well.</p></li>
<li><p>Not going to class. If you didnt go to lectures that will hurt you (even just a few). Even if you arent paying 100% attention, that extra boost in other people’s grades are because they actually attend, and your little mistakes are because you don’t. Even if things are ‘easy’ its still good to go so your brain can hear the information, snipits at a time, and its a lot easier for it to go back and remember the class a few weeks ago rather than all the information crammed into your head the past 48 hours.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I dont know if these apply to you, but they are definitely the two things that Ive learned really effect performance.</p>
<p>Your weak biology background doesn’t contribute much to your test grade, unless you’ve taken AP bio. Most people taking the course are in the same boat. They haven’t taken biology since freshman year. It’s simply poor study habits. Almost every professor tells you not to cram for this simply reason.</p>
<p>As for the concern with your major: Like I said, it was your poor study habits.I think that you don’t like it because…nobody likes cramming day and night 5 days before the test. You didn’t excel because you didn’t try hard enough. I don’t mean being able to study day and night for 5 days straight. That’s pretty good. It’s just wasted effort. I mean planning ahead and spending time earlier to learn the material. If you want to major in sciences, you’re going to have to be able to plan your time much earlier. BlueSkyPinkCloud also has some pretty good stuff.</p>
<p>Give Bio another chance before you completely throw it out…and give it a real chance.</p>
<p>I dont think it is a problem of ‘lack of effort’ rather than just not knowing how to learn effectively. Only through your own experiences will you know what works best for you, but definitely working earlier and pacing your work weeks before a test is key to your performance. Try to go over material either As your professor does, or (best case scenario) before the lecture.</p>
<p>The bild classes really arent that hard, they just help you to learn these study habits before you get into the killer upper div classes where you Constantly need to be assimilating information. The people who cram and don’t go to class end up being the people who have to drop out of the major because ochem/genetics/biochem kill them.</p>
<p>Plan ahead, pace yourself, and dont over exert yourself before a test or you will just forget it all.</p>
<p>Yeah, I worded my post poorly. BlueSkyPinkCloud did a much better job posting what I wanted to say.</p>