Biology 1B: Tips and Tricks

<p>ugh. got my lab score today… did lab HELP anyone?</p>

<p>where’d you find out your lab score?</p>

<p>GSI told us.</p>

<p>I think my GSI was really good about informing all of us about this 85% average. She told us at the beginning of the semester and emphasized that she WILL make lab a lot harder than other sections, so that she will end up raising everybody’s grades at the end. Although her quizzes are really hard (averages around 2.5-3 out of 5), I think everyone in my section had an equal chance of doing well. With all the scores for lab, it looks like I’m going to get around 90%… hopefully, it works out for all you guys…</p>

<p>See, at least you know your section is gonna be hard. All my gsi ever said about grades was that she was required to keep an 85%. I mean this was literally her answer to every question about grades: “Well, I need to keep the 85% so we’ll see.” </p>

<p>My question is…why keep this 85% average? It’s ridiculous when you can go to your GSI’s office hours, comb through everything and have her basically check your responses and then still end up with a B- on the lab. gagagaa</p>

<p>My GSI did the same, saying that the section will be hard also, but with the amount of groupwork we do, our grades are pretty clumped so raising the average to 85% only made the lowest score an 80%… I also feel it is unfair that we have so much groupwork and they do not take into account how much work individual members do, I feel like I definitely put in my share while my group members did not, thus lowering all of our grades.</p>

<p>Bio 1B should learn from Bio 1AL to make labs much fairer. I used to dislike Bio 1AL for its difficulty but after taking Bio 1B, I now REALLY appreciate for Mike Meighan and his dedication to the course and making it extremely fair. For those who have not taken Bio 1AL, he basically takes the average of each section’s midterm grade (everyone takes the same midterm) and then average of each section’s quizzes and plots them, makes some sort of trendline, and bumps everyone up to the easiest section so that you don’t get penalized for super hard sections.</p>

<p>The group work… I hate it! It is pretty obvious that different people put in different amounts of effort but no one wants to be the jerk who comes out and says it. Sigh. I hate having so much of my grade depend on group work. If I get a bad grade, I’d like to know that it was all my own doing. I’d accept it and move on. But with group work, I can’t say that it’s all my fault. Of course there will be resentment. Also, it’s unfair because we are stuck with our group. If we get stuck with crappy people, then our grades suffer due to chance. :[ That 85% thing feels like an excuse… Well, at least I get to rant here.</p>

<p>anyone else think resh’s sample questions are very confusing? what the hell…</p>

<p>How difficult are the pre-lab quizzes. Should I know every word of the lab readings?</p>