Medical Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology III

Like the 2nd year in general, this is a tale of two halves. The first half is really a repeat of neural anatomy and neural physiology and so is not that difficult, the mail context should be known to you and all that is added is the biochemical angle. The second half contains some things that will have been mentioned in physiology but in a lot more detail, it is not easy. The final exam is tough as it contains anything from this and the previous two semesters.

How to pass
The first half of the semester has easy to read, understand and study notes that can be used to pass the first midterm, try to find them

Don't go to the lectures after the first midterm, it is better to find the information in books and memorize all of it. Not even the lectures cover the entire information needed to answer all the questions on the second midterm.

Find a map of homeostasis and learn it perfectly, including: internal and external pathways, inhibitions and where, activations and where etc.

Try to negotiate with your lab teacher to give you the bonus points even if you don't do the lab reports. They are still useless to write and the bonus points can help a lot in the final

Do a presentation sometime in the semester, it is best to do it at the start, it is an easy 4 points and the presentation does not need to be very good

Passing the lab test in the last week frees up a lot of useless studying in the exam period

The lab exam is generally a waste of time, some of it is useful for revision of metabolism but it is not what they are looking for when you write your essay. They seem to want an accurate description of what was done with the names of all the chemicals that were used rather than the reason why the experiment was done in the first place. Completely useless and it will be forgotten as soon as you get a passing grade

<span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Different teachers can give the same essay different grades. I personally failed in the last week and got the same topic in the final, wrote the same thing and passed.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The open questions of the final focus on the second semester but can have questions from all three, make sure you know all the important reactions perfectly and any diseases associated with them

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Know the structures of important molecules and be able to draw them (pyruvate, lactate, glucose, all the nucleotides and all the amino acids)

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">There are a lot of multiple choice questions on the first semester, especially DNA

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Using logical answering strategies can gain you a lot of points, if you know for certain that an answer is right or wrong you can use that to narrow down the choices of possible answers

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">If a possible answer is only used once in the possible selections then it is more than likely wrong e.g...

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">A. 123 B. 234 C. 235 D. 245 E. 45... then option 1 is more likely to be wrong

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Similarly if the number is used more often it is usually right

The exams
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Midterms x 2:

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Two pages of open questions

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">30 multiple choice questions

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Final:

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Two pages of open questions from the 3 semesters

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">70 multiple choice questions from the 3 semesters

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Lab exam (exempt if passed on the last week)

The difficulties
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The lectures for the second half of the semester are terrible, they are presented badly and the slides themselves do not contain any useful or easy to follow information.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The final lab exam contains all the labs from all 3 semesters of the biochemistry course

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Studying and memorizing the same material yet another time is very demoralizing

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The lab exams are marked too subjectively

Conclusion
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 15.75pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: rgb(58, 58, 58); font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The test for the final is just like all the others just bigger, there will be questions that you will not have any idea about as well as questions that don't seem to make sense. Using your knowledge and answering strategies will pass you but you may not think it when you leave the test room