<p>Hello! I am aspiring to be a vet when I grow up. However, I really need to work a lot of my science skills. My biology teacher is boring, so I generally have trouble paying attention in class and just look over the study guide she gives us. (which is nice of her)</p>
<p>So I have a test tomorrow and I was going to sit down and study it today, when I realized none of it connects with me. If I were to study this, I would literally just be memorizing definitions.</p>
<p>For example:</p>
<p>Desmosomes - intermediate filaments weld cell membranes of adjacent cells together in isolated spots.</p>
<p>What? .....What? I do not understand any of this, or what it means. Am I too far behind? I have ADD, but I take medicine for it and I didn't think that it would be this difficult to understand. When I study for other things such as Psychology, I know what it's talking about and it's easy to relate it to something. With this it's just... Nothing. Please help!</p>
<p>How do you study? I have been writing this over and over again on paper, but it's still not connecting to me. I just do not get what she's talking about, and we were told we did NOT have to buy the book for this class. (I cannot afford the 150 dollars that it is anyways)</p>
<p>type the following phrase into google: “how to study biology” you’ll get lots of info!</p>
<p>Fundamentally, though, studying is about being actively involved. And the nite before the test is probably too late. As you’ve discovered in some other classes, relating what you’re learning to something else is one key way to study. </p>
<p>Something else you could be doing is making flash cards. You may have 50-100 definitions to memorize, something that you could do if you just needed to learn 10 or so a day but that is going to be much more difficult to do in one nite.</p>
<p>Lastly, you don’t say what school you attend but most schools have a learning-skills center where they can help you with approaches to material. And one book I recommend that covers this is “What Smart Students Know”, written by the co-founder of the Princeton Review Prep service. It does for college what his service does for the SAT, explaining how you study various types of material.</p>
<p>Have you tried drawing pictures/diagrams? I always draw to learn bio, rather than just learning definitions. It’s also really helpful to break things down into grouped concepts, and memorize them as “units”. I like to make a review sheet for each unit, like one for desmosomes, other filaments, and the surfaces they bind to (if important for your test) like the basal lamina.</p>
<p>You used desmosomes as an example. If I were trying to learn what a desmosome was, first I’d break down that definition so that I understand exactly what a desmosome is.</p>
<p>“intermediate filaments weld cell membranes of adjacent cells together in isolated spots.”
Ok. So a desmosome is a filament, which is sort of like a rope or tether. Its function is to “weld cell membranes of adjacent cells”, so it’s located on the outside of the cell. When two cells want to bind/sit together, they’ll use their desmosomes to reach out and tether to one another. To remember this, I’d probably just draw a picture of cells sitting adjacent, with little filaments reaching out to each other, and label these filaments. In the same picture I’d label other major cell parts that I’m expected to know.</p>
<p>This sounds tedious, but learning bio is tedious, especially gen bio which aims to be as dull as possible. </p>
<p>Hope this helps a little… This is just my way of doing it–some people aren’t as visual and don’t need to do it this way. You kind of just have to figure out what works for you, but most people can’t just memorize word-for-word definitions. It’s also pretty safe to just wiki these basic definitions, which will give you rounded explanations and pictures.</p>
<p>This is actually really good advice for bio…I’ve always had a harder time with bio than chemistry (cause for chem, you have problem sets which you can work through that help you understand). Thanks for this! (and hopefully the OP will find it helpful too)</p>
<p>Pictures help me - especially with cells. I like to see what it looks like, what it connects to. Mnemonics are extremely helpful - really good for anatomy at least. Its also helpful for me to make comparisons or little pictures in my head or a little saying. Theres a welder named Des and he spends his time welding together nearby cells together. It doesn’t have to be exact, but if it can remind me enough, then I’ll get it.</p>
<p>This all helped a lot, thank you guys very much. I had my test today and I think I did alright - 24 hours of cramming, rewriting definitions, and studying pictures to thank! Although I really need to start studying more in between tests, a lot less stress I’d imagine. I think a huge problem is not having a Bio book, it just gives you so many great visual aids.</p>
<p>Yakyu Spirits, sadly your post had literally nothing to do with the content or even the main idea of the original post. But thank you anyways for your contribution.</p>