<p>I like Biology. I love reading and memorizing the textbook. I don't like the labs though. I'm not a hands on person. How do I pass Bio lab because its 25% of my grade?</p>
<p>I’m not a fan of labs either, but sometimes you have to suck it up and do something you don’t enjoy for a good grade.</p>
<p>so do i just read the lab book twice before going to the lab? i need tips.</p>
<p>Expect the pungent odor of formaldehyde permeating the air … </p>
<p>In all seriousness though, do well on the lab practicals. That involves memorization too like figuring out what organ the label is pointing to and its function. I’m not much of a hands on person either. I had two other partners who did most of the work (not because I didn’t want to, but because they’re more into taking control).</p>
<p>Jenonymous,</p>
<p>you realize there are many types of biology labs and that your statements about lab practicals and formaldehyde may not apply at all…</p>
<p>In fact most of the time the lab grade is based on whether or not you tried and how good your lab report is (regardless of how good the data is as long as you acknowledge when you’re data is bad).</p>
<p>For intro level labs, they get really boring, mundane, tedious, unnecessary… Just a pain. For my first lab in intro bio, we looked at and talked about grass for 2 hours. There are few things that are interesting enough to talk about for 2 bloody hours straight and surprise, surprise grass is NOT one of them. It was terrible. Apparently the RA we had was the worst. Easy but so stupid. Just read what you’re told to. You aren’t going to need to read the entire book for each lab</p>
<p>Unless your data is seriously screwed, the thing that’d make or break you is the lab reports.</p>
<p>I’m hoping, praying, dreaming, etc that the upper level bio classes have better labs.</p>
<p>i<em>wanna</em>be-Brown,</p>
<p>Just commenting from my own personal experience and giving my $0.02. For ours we did standard stuff like pig, frog, and sheep heart dissections. We also grew plants and did seed counts by mixing different cultures, an experiment about plasma glucose, oxygen circulation experiment with animals, and other things. How am I supposed to know what kind of lab he/she has? I’m just sharing my own personal tips here :)</p>
<p>mb late reply.</p>
<p>Bio 102 - Cells and stuff</p>
<p>I felt my biology lab was a bunch of “busy work” with occasionally an interesting lab tossed in. Looking at microscopes, sketching pictures of phenotypes and microorganisms, once in a while doing something with actual chemicals, but not really because it was all qualitative anyways and didn’t matter. Nothing was actually that bad for my intro bio lab. I think the only things my TA actually “graded” were our basic quizzes that if you had even glanced at the lab handout you would have aced, and your graphs/observations/analysis which were beyond simple compared to ANY chemistry lab. I think you should try to read through the lab handouts and understand them, and talk to your TA or other people in the lab if you don’t get it, cause surely someone will, and probably make sure you understand how to analyze your results, because the hands-on stuff seemed like stuff anyone who knew how to wash their hands could do.</p>
<p>I don’t know how it is for your bio lab, but for mine its really intense. For a class that’s only 1.5 credits I really put more work into it than the 3 credit lecture. First of all you’ll probably have tests called practicals where you have to identify things under a microscope and the picture is blurry and it could be unclear to what the pointer is pointing to. For my school we had to memorize the Genus of multiply organisms and even spell their names right or it was wrong. Platyhelminthes, Cnidaria, Porfiera, Nematoda, Annelida are all the phylum’s that will be on my next practical. Classes like termatoda, turbellaria, cestoda, hexactinellida, Scypha, Calcarea, Demospngaie will also be on there just to name a few. SO if you’re good at memorizing, then you shouldn’t have a problem. Oh dissections in college are not like the dissections in high school. You have to know every part of the organism which could be hard if everything looks the same. Good Luck !! !!</p>
<p>lab is the fun part man. the tough part is when you have to write the scientific journal style papers for the labs</p>