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Uni Stuff => General University Discussion and Queries => The University Journey Journal => Topic started by: Billuminati on January 08, 2020, 02:11:26 am

Title: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on January 08, 2020, 02:11:26 am
How I got here: Hello everyone, my name is Bill and I have just completed my first year of Monash biomed in 2019. In this journal I’ll be documenting my journey through the final 2 years of my degree and anything that may come after it. My unit reviews on the Monash Subject Reviews thread already serve as a mini uni journal for me in first year, detailing every nitty gritty detail of my experience with all the assessment tasks I had so far in every unit. Now, I have decided to start a full uni journal as an exercise in reflective writing, which Chantal said was very important for doctors and health workers. So I’m a class of 2018 graduate who failed the UMAT epically (57%ile, failed section 2 with a 43). My high school exams also screwed me over *cough 2018 methods exam 1 cough* and here I am now. I toughed out one year of biomed already with a 4.0 GPA and an OK WAM, one of my goals for the next 2 years would be maintaining this GPA and improving my WAM to the mid-high 90s. However, given that an unstated prereq to ALL courses is sanity, my other, arguably more important goal, would be to not go crazy and to take good care of my mental health even in the stressful atmospheres of GAMSAT preparation, semester exams or med interviews. Bottom line is, I don’t want to be in need of a doctor before I become one :P.

Plans for the rest of my degree: Given that it’s biomed I’m taking, I don’t really get that many electives to begin with. I’m taking a 6-unit minor in chem (CHM1011, 1022, 2911, 2942, 3930, 3972) and two level 3 physiology units (PHY3181, 3990) because they’re required for an MTeach in chem and bio, for some reason the education faculty considers 6 units as a major lol. The chem units are all bludge units (except for CHM2911), so coupled with my interest in chem hopefully they’ll carry my GPA and WAM. In particular, from the unit guides I can already see that CHM2942 (biological chem) and CHM3930 (medicinal chem) will have significant overlaps with our biochem/molecular bio units (BMS1011, 1062, 2021, 2062). I’m taking PHY3181 (hormones and reproduction) because hormones are just fancy organic molecules and I enjoyed the hormone lectures in BMS1052 so much that I wish to specialise in endocrinology if I get into MD. The reproduction component doesn’t really interest me that much, it looks too similar to dev bio which I deliberately avoided due to the amount of memorisation required. The research project (PHY3990) I want to do is naturally the one hosted by the unit coordinator of PHY3181 (Renea), which is on the effects of hormones on prostrate cancer tissue. This combination of PHY units has many of my astrology-obsessed mates commenting that it’s so typically pervy of my star sign (Scorpio apparently, I remember my birthday was the day before my year 12 English exam).  In addition to my units, I shall treat GAMSAT preparation as a separate unit during the winter and summer breaks.

Plans after my degree: Like virtually every other Asian biomed boi out there, I’m gunning for the juicy postgrad MD/DDS courses. I’ll take an honours year if I have to, to give myself more transferable skills and an extra 2 attempts at the GAMSAT. If I still fail, I might go into secondary teaching, though I’m leaning away from this now. My high school teachers warned me against a career in teaching because of the overwhelming amount of paperwork and that there’s a general trend where parents and kids are increasingly entitled, disrespectful and demanding. I’m also considering electrical or chemical engineering. I prefer chem eng cuz it’s pretty much thermodynamics which I enjoyed in chem, but I’m also interested in developing AIs with the knowledge I’ll acquire in an ECSE specialisation and neurophysiology from biomed. In Australia, jobs in these specialisations are limited, so I’m OK with relocating. My ATAR from 2018 just makes the cut for the accelerated Masters Program, so I’ll apply for that for entry in 2022 along with an MTeach.

Plans for the summer break Relentless GAMSAT study/procrastination. I’m trying to study BMS2021, BMS2031 and CHM2911 in advance because they contain topics on GAMSAT section 3 that weren’t taught in 1st year. I’m also busy moderating a VCE discord server and answering any questions from the current year 11-12s there. As Chantal noted, teaching is the best form of learning and you can remember 95% of what you teach. By helping high schoolers with understanding bio and chem concepts, I’m forcing myself to really understand the foundations of what I’m learning now, which makes absorbing new content from biomed so much easier, it’s a win-win. I’ll also be giving myself work experience should I one day decide to pursue a career in education, even if I miraculously get into med school, ideally I wish to practice medicine for a few years then come back to be a professor. I would’ve applied for a PASS leader position for 2020, but I heard it will be better to do this in my 3rd year when I’ll have less units. Just counting down to when I’ll be free again. T-minus 186 days until sem 1 result release day. Totally don’t want to know exactly how long I have until GAMSAT day. Signing off for today.
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on January 10, 2020, 12:02:29 am
10/01/2020 Update: Finally finished studying physics and physical chem concepts that weren't taught to us in BMS1031 and CHM1011. Only systems physiology left to go before I start trial GAMSAT exams, already have section 1, 2, organic chem, physical chem, physics and most of bio nailed and good to go. Also I realised that using the right hand rule in the exam may look very suspicious to the invigilators lol
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: caffinatedloz on January 10, 2020, 08:36:26 am
Hey Bill! Great to meet you. (I love your profile GIF btw, very cool.) What interests you about medicine and being a doctor? ;D
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on January 10, 2020, 07:32:59 pm
Hey Bill! Great to meet you. (I love your profile GIF btw, very cool.) What interests you about medicine and being a doctor? ;D

Cheers Laura, the main thing that appeals to me about being a doctor is the personal development aspect of it, I think it's a rare job that can turn you into a better person as you go into the profession instead of making you more cynical/jaded like most jobs do. I used to want to make a difference as an oncologist, but I realized very quickly that it will be very bad for my mental health seeing patients suffer and their families grieve. I was sick when I was a baby for a month and my mum described the differences a good and bad doctor could make on children's health using my experience as an example (I must've been too young to remember). That got me into pediatry for a while, but given that it requires even more responsibility and burden if I potentially mess something up and that I'll literally have lives of future generations in my hand, it might be too much. Endocrinology is my current choice because it's low risk, I loved the endocrine content taught in BMS so far and I get to be a part of the solution for the obesity/diabetes crisis. I know most people got their inspirations for med by seeing one of their family members get sick/die, but tbh my family has limited exposure to medicine thanks to healthy genetics that run in my family. All 4 of my grandparents are 80+ years old and really healthy. I got some inside info of the profession from my grandaunt who's a gynecologist, she gave me a realistic view on medicine as a career with all its pros and cons, so I guess that would be enough to make up for the lack of contact with the health system for the time being, although I would prefer to find out more myself via a placement or something
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on June 04, 2021, 02:56:32 am
Just a quick update on the hell that is Monash biomed (and no I didn't die of rona  :P)

Due to mental health reasons, I took a gap year for the entirety of 2020 as soon as rona hit here. So, technically I got held down one year, but I was surprised no one actually judged me in my new cohort for being slightly older. This semester was hella a wild ride, my grades were up from first year despite the numerous horrible group projects, I’m probably annoying the hell out of other students and lecturers by spamming the forums with my dumb questions and I can’t stress enough that my sleep cycle is FUBAR. I did BMS2011, BMS2021, BMS2031 and CHM2911 as my elective, and I'll write reviews for those as soon as I get my results back. In the SETUs, I'm a massive Karen especially with my anatomy unit, for which I have an exam in 3 days, you'll see why when I write my review on it on results day.

I've taken the GAMSAT back in March with some preparation as in going over my lecture notes from first year, and somehow got a 66 overall score on it (62/62/70), showing up as 82-83rd percentile on the sigmoidal curve ACER provides. Luckily, this displaced my abysmal UMAT results located on my home page of the ACER portal so I won't have to look that in the face anymore. I'll definitely be sitting the GAMSAT in September and March next year.
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on June 15, 2021, 12:47:32 am
Now is officially the halfway point through hell month, have anatomy (BMS2011) and biochem (BMS2021) exams out of the way now. Still have physiology (BMS2031) on Friday and chem (CHM2911) next Tuesday to go. Low key panicking for chem cuz it’s closed book.
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: caffinatedloz on June 15, 2021, 06:00:57 pm
Good luck with the exams left to go! Are they in person this semester?
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Stormbreaker-X on June 15, 2021, 06:18:59 pm
All the best, we will be supporting you on the sidelines :)
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on June 15, 2021, 08:30:34 pm
Good luck with the exams left to go! Are they in person this semester?

Due to rona they all got moved off campus, so for closed book exams we need our microphones and webcams on our laptops turned on.
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on June 22, 2021, 09:15:28 pm
Update: Exams are officially over now, just finished my chem exam. I will be writing the unit reviews for the subjects I did this semester (BMS2011, BMS2021, BMS2031 and CHM2911) starting now. Please stay tuned for the Monash subject review board.
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on June 28, 2021, 04:23:37 pm
I've finally put in my timetable preferences an hour before they closed at 9AM, now I'll move on to writing those unit reviews for the subject review megathread.
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on July 05, 2021, 11:52:29 am
Update: I found a hack that allows you to see your timetable on Allocate+ a day early. You go to the my timetable tile on My Monash and click the "next week" button a few times, but it won't let you change your allocations until tomorrow morning

So far I have classes on Monday afternoon, Tuesday afternoon and all of Thursday (most Thursdays aren't actually full days due to some labs not running every week or running as Zoom classes), but I might make that all of Tuesday and all of Thursday instead. Alternatively I can move my Thursday morning genetics lab to Wednesday afternoon (which was a highly in demand session) and have a full Tuesday, Wednesday afternoons and Thursday afternoons.

PS I'm posting my BMS2021 review tonight, and CHM2911 review tomorrow night. In the mean time, if any 1st year biomedder want a Y1 S2 survival guide, please head to the links below:

BMS1042: https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=43048.msg1148977#msg1148977
BMS1052: https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=43048.msg1148978#msg1148978
BMS1062: https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=43048.msg1148979#msg1148979
And for those of you doing CHM1022/1052: https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=43048.msg1148980#msg1148980
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on July 06, 2021, 10:25:13 am
It turns out I had more stuff to rant about in BMS2021 than I initially thought, so I'm posting both BMS2021 and CHM2911 reviews this afternoon or tonight. On the bright side, I've just secured my perfect timetable exactly as planned on Allocate+.
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on July 10, 2021, 08:01:40 am
Alright, as promised, I have posted reviews for all the subjects I've taken in semester 1 2021 onto the Monash Subject Review thread, I'll link them below. My results come out in 1 day because I signed up for early SMS results release. Once they do, I'll update my final grades, my thoughts on how easily or harshly the exams were marked, as well as if I think the faculty scaled everyone's marks up.

BMS2011 (anatomy): https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=43048.msg1193923#msg1193923
BMS2021 (molecular bio/biochem): https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=43048.msg1193811#msg1193811
BMS2031 (physiology): https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=43048.msg1193924#msg1193924
CHM2911 (inorganic + organic chem): https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=43048.msg1193848#msg1193848
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on July 25, 2021, 08:42:53 pm
General life updates: A couple of things have happened over the past few weeks after the results for sem 1 came out:

1. I’ve registered for the September GAMSAT sitting a few days ago, it’s round 2 for me and realistically I’m aiming for around 67-70. Now I’m familiar with the question styles from my first GAMSAT sitting in March, I’ll focus on getting into the exam writers’ heads and write similar questions for myself to answer.

2. My unit Moodle pages just came up for sem 2, although there are no useful info on them at the moment. I was keen on watching all the week 1 lectures during O-week so that at worst I’ll only have 11 weeks of lectures to binge when SWOTVAC comes given my usual level of procrastination.

3. I was invited by the BMS2031 teaching team to attend an 1-hr Zoom call on how they could improve labs. I’m looking forward to it because I’m quite interested in education myself and this is a perfect networking opportunity for a potential PHY3990 project with Julia’s physiology education lab group.

4. At the last minute, I dropped CHM2942 because the lab content was so confusing (too many self-designed experiments with almost no hints) and the unit looks like it’s not well coordinated as there are actually quizzes you have to complete inside the tutes. Normally I use tutes to reinforce lecture content, but if I’m too concerned about the quiz at the end, I’m likely to be distracted and not pay so much attention. I have enrolled myself in CHM2922 which is physical+instrumental chem because the other day in my VCE server, I was trying to answer some kids’ questions on spectroscopy and electrochem but ended up confusing myself, so I figured that I couldn’t become a competent chem teacher without doing that unit. It looks like there will be a lot of maths involved, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it won’t require too many new skills from CHM1011.

On another note, since this marks the halfway mark through my 3-year biomed degree, I feel like I’m having a mid-degree crisis, so I decided to calm myself down by turning this journal update into a year 2 sem 1 survival guide, reflecting on what study/life habits I’m likely to change for sem 2.

General Y2 S1 observations: So for those who are unfamiliar with how biomed units work at Monash, in 2nd year 1st sem you’ll be studying BMS2011 (anatomy), BMS2021 (biochem) and BMS2031 (physiology) along with 1 elective of your choice. My elective was CHM2911 which is basically an extended, 2nd year version of CHM1022 focusing on organic and inorganic synthesis. Not that long ago, anatomy, biochem and physiology were the 3 prereqs for a postgrad MD and a general consensus is that they’re the most intimidating premed core units. I’ve found that the best way to tackle this semester is to adopt an integrated approach, or to put it more plainly, use a subject you’re confident in to steal the other subjects with overlaps.

For me, the subject I was most confident with was chem maybe from all those late night Breaking Bad binges. I used Le Chatelier’s Principle I learned in year 12 (and expanded upon in 1st and 2nd year uni chem) to steal physiology, because when you think about it, physiology is basically equilibrium systems applied on a biological and macroscopic scale (homeostasis). It boils down to when you have too much of something, you don't want more of it. Likewise, if there's a stimulus that takes your body away from an ideal level of something, you'd want to restore it back to the optimal level by making a change opposite to the direction of the change caused by the initial stimulus. If you understand physiology in terms of equilibrium systems, it is virtually impossible to forget the physiological trends compared to if you memorised them via brute force. The autonomic nervous system, neuroendocrine and pharmacology stuff you learn in BMS1052 (1st year neurobio) comes back as well, so knowing how the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems work is crucial (there is also overlap of this with your anatomy unit if you decide that anatomy is your most confident subject that you use to steal others).


Similarly to physiology, you can also explain large chunks of biochem away with Le Chat's rule, especially in the metabolism lecture topic which itself overlaps heavily with BMS1011, your 1st year biochem unit. The various signalling pathways and specific phosphorylation cascades introduced to you in biochem come in VERY handy in physiology as well when you're asked to explain exactly what happens when a neurotransmitter/hormone binds to its receptor and how exactly the given signalling pathway alter physiological function on a molecular scale. These pathways also overlap with other lecture topics you cover within the same biochem unit, an example would be overactive growth/proliferation signalling pathways= cancer.


Finally anatomy is the tough one which traditionally required a lot of brute force memorisation. Luckily, in physiology, they teach you a lot of anatomy because as they say, form fits function. Once you link form to function, learning anatomy will definitely be a lot more intuitive, partially eliminating the need for rote memorisation. The benefits of physiology knowledge on anatomy study is reciprocated, because anatomy explains some difficult physiological concepts that the physiology lecturers take for granted and don’t explain adequately. An example would what muscles are active during passive/active/vigorous inhalation or exhalation, and how that would affect passive/active/vigorous inhalation/exhalation rates. All the hormone stuff in physiology and embryonic development stuff from biochem complement really well with the reproductive anatomy and embryology content. Since both the anatomy and physiology units are organised (pun 100% intended) into body systems (cardiovascular, urinary, endocrine, respiratory, digestive and reproductive), you can pretty much understand one from the other.


Another trend I have noticed is that exam difficulty is inversely proportional to in-sem assessment difficulty. For instance, anatomy which had extremely difficult lab tests had a super easy final exam (although it’s closed book). Meanwhile, physiology in-sem labs and tests were all free marks, but the final exam was a killer. Despite being open-book, you’re not given enough time to check over your answers. Biochem was middle of the road both in terms of in-sem assessment and final exam difficulty, However, this doesn’t seem to apply to CHM2911, because the exam was of average difficulty (leaning on the easy side) while the lab reports, assessed tutes and prelecture quizzes which were conducted open-book were absolute steals.

What I regretted: Cramming for the memorisation-intensive subjects *cough* anatomy *cough* due to missing lectures. While I was able to cram a lot of content into my brain just in time for the final exam during SWOTVAC, I still felt I didn’t get the most out of my time in the unit. Additionally, falling 2 or so weeks behind in anatomy wasn’t the brightest of ideas, it costed me dearly in terms of in-semester assessments where I scored poorly and I looked like a total idiot in the labs because I didn’t know what I was doing.

To a lesser extent, this was also true for physiology. I was overconfident for the exam because my in-sem score for physiology was 67/70 and the exam which consisted the remaining 30% of the unit grade was open book. However the final exam screwed me over because by the time I finished the exam, I had no time to proofread/check my responses. I only crammed digestive and reproductive systems at the last minute and I was explicitly informed beforehand that these topics will be examined disproportionately on the exam by Julia, so I guess that was entirely my fault for leaving it all last minute to SWOTVAC.

I also regretted not putting so much trust in my team members for group projects, which ended up in me getting some mixed peer reviews and hard feelings. Despite one person who I interpreted was playing mind games with me in the peer reviews, I’m not about to dismiss a perfectly valid message due to a bad messenger. The other awesome group members with whom I really bonded last sem (we genuinely cared about each others’ personal development) also provided me with the same feedback that I shouldn’t steal other peoples’ parts by completing everything on my own. I think I’ll come up with a better system to monitor team progress instead of assuming my group members are guilty until proven innocent.

What I’ll do next sem: I will continue to help other people on the Moodle forums because that will really help out my communication skills which is one of the criteria on the med interviews, as well as being an essential skill for a potential career in teaching. Besides, as they say, teaching is the best form of learning, if you can explain something well to someone else, you won’t have any problems explaining that you know your sh*t to the assessors on your final exam.

Since I’ve identified my shortcomings of last semester under my last heading, I feel what I need to do in order to address them is self evident. Although the solutions are pretty obvious, whether or not I can successfully implement them in practice remains to be seen, I’m confident I’m able to.

I’m aware that I didn’t reach my goal of raising my WAM into the mid 90s (mine is just a tad above 92 right now), however I’ve been looking for ways that help me break that ceiling. One of the info sources I will mention a little later highly recommends spaced repetition, especially a flashcard app called Anki. I used Anki for bio 3/4, but for some reason it didn’t really work well for me. I’m giving it a 2nd chance this sem, especially with the memorisation-heavy unit this sem ie microbio.

In accordance with my integrated approach, I can see that sem 2 is basically BMS1062 (biochem/molecular bio) disassembled, then amplified into 3 units, BMS2042 (genetics), BMS2052 (microbio) and BMS2062 (bioinformatics/molecular bio). My chem elective is CHM2922, which is very different from the rest, so I’m not sure if I can steal this unit with the knowledge from my other units. Most likely I’ll be using the physical chem stuff from CHM1011 to help me understand it. I’ll update this journal to give an indication of whether or not the integrated method still works for Y2 S2 (fingers crossed that it does).

I recently came across this very inspirational Reddit thread by a student-staff who once offered me some really valuable insights into how the postgrad med admission process works at Monash. This post which was announced almost a month prior to its publication inspired me to create my version of the guide for biomedders such as this very journal update, as well as suggesting some of the modifications to my study habits I intend to make this sem mentioned above: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monash/comments/ooo9gm/im_a_3rd_year_science_student_who_ended_first/
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on August 06, 2021, 01:43:39 pm
Update at end of week 2: So lockdown 6.0 happens (thanks a lot for ruining our WAM/GPAs Dan, transitioning into and out of lockdowns and adapting my study habits to these oscillations is literal torture, are you trying to make us all into Jack from The Shining with the cabin fever mate?).

During my bioinformatics workshop yesterday, my TA was complaining about why the uni doesn't make all of S2 online or on campus instead of dipping into and out of lockdown. I can't agree with her enough. Also it makes no sense whatsoever that we had SFR aka WAMnesty last sem when we didn't have in-sem lockdowns whereas this sem is riddled with them and yet the uni decided to cancel it. But on the bright side, BMS2062 is pretty well run and the assessments are very easy, and my TA is extremely nice to us despite the fact that I overslept during my week 1 Zoom workshop (screwed up circadian rhythm) and totally missed it.

BMS2052 started us on the microbio group project that got us to build our own pathogen. I was kinda bummed that the pathogen had to be bacterial to demonstrate our knowledge of virulence factors cuz I was going to build rona-22, but it is what it is. My group members are pretty decent, they're all the kind who had to carry their past group projects so I won't have to deal with freeloaders again. Not that I'm afraid to, but it's nice to have hard working people on your team for a change. At this stage we divided the work such that we can do however much we want in this 1st week, and I made sure not to take everything again to allow some democracy which is something my past group members have complained to be inadequate

BMS2042 is all over the place (mostly my fault for not applying the knowledge I learned from my lectures which seem straightforward at the time). Just handed in a virtual lab that tests our knowledge on Punnett squares and associated probabilities (we had to do tetrahybrid crosses). I think I did decent on it, but not outstanding.

CHM2922, being as disorganised as it is right now, turned out to be more work than I thought (just handed in an introductory lab report that was poorly run which was due one day after the lab, I mean, bruh). The computer simulations of molecular movements made no sense at all and the TA refused to give us much pointers on it (we do have another nicer TA though). However, I do understand that Jie and Mike are trying their best despite being caught in Dan's mercurial mood. Chris from 1st year chem told me recently that the chem department including staff activity is subject to lockdowns whereas a lot of biomed teaching activities aren't due to being within the medicine faculty. Maybe that's why our biomed lecturers have the time to organise our units to adapt them for lockdowns? Although at the moment CHM2922 would rank worse than BMS2011 (which already received a 0 on my unit review), I'm not going to be harsh on them because it's apparent they're doing everything they can to help us pass the unit. I still don't regret transferring out of CHM2942 cuz from what I can tell it's even worse.

Sorry for being a negative Nancy, but it really relieves me to get this off my chest. After all, no uni journal is complete without a mental breakdown rant and a journal without it would be too good to be true. It's really sad that due to my workload and the tremendous effort required to transition my learning style effectively in and out of lockdown, I can only check the ATAR Notes subject help boards once a day instead of 3-4 times a day during my semester break
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on September 04, 2021, 10:11:57 am
Update at end of week 6: Now we’re officially past the half way mark and census date of sem 2. A lot has happened since the last update and the never ending lockdowns. I failed my first ever assessment task in bioinformatics (42%) due to a combination of inadequate study and poor wording of the questions (one of the correct answers had a typo in it so I didn’t choose it). It’s only worth 2% and I heard of people failing the BMS1052 midsem in the year (worth 10%) I did it (2019), but still end up scoring better than me in the overall score, so not all hope is lost.

Motivation has returned somewhat to normal levels since my other assessment tasks are in the mid-high 90s. Just had my CHM2922 midsem on Tuesday and while I think it was a pretty straightforward exam, I felt I didn’t do too well in it, probably in the low 80s as I pulled an all-nighter cramming for it. I’m predicting genetics and microbio midsems in a few weeks time to be absolute pains, because while I’m able to apply and understand the content in open book lab quizzes, doing an hour-long closed book midsem is a whole new level.

There is an obligatory Monash Student Association shitpost attached. It seems that whoever we vote for to represent us when dealing with the faculty, they don’t get any real sh*t done at all (such as getting SFR back during these disruptive times) and instead they are too self absorbed in grabbing more power. While I didn’t use SFR last sem as my WAM improved a little, I still feel like SFR is a confidence boost and peace of mind
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on September 30, 2021, 11:05:19 pm
Update at end of midsem break: Well it's been quite a while since I've updated my journal. I'm sorry that I didn't really find the time to help on the ATAR Notes boards because I was absolutely loaded with assignments and tests in all of my units, as well as keeping up with the lectures.

BMS2042: I had the most horrible midsem ever (it was called a lab test), it was so pushed for time, I think I only got like 60% on it. Luckily, the genetic counselling project worth 10% went super well with 96%. You are given a pedigree and basically you need to play the part of a genetic counsellor. It was open for 3 days only in week 7, I interpret it to be some kind of open book midsem as opposed to the closed book lab test we sat in week 9 as it examines a lot of the content covered in the labs up to that point. I'm now in a group project which involves delivering an oral presentation on why an assigned model organism (ours was the mouse) is the best for modelling human disease. So far, it's going really well, my group has finished our scripts and by Saturday, everyone will have completed their slides.

BMS2052:: I handed in my build a pathogen group project and we actually got our mark back today. To say my group was disappointed was a massive understatement, we only got 12/15, with the peer-review accounted, my final grade for the project was 16.9/20. I initially thought the assessor was lazy because they exclusively gave us marks in the 2nd column of the rubric, but on closer inspection of their provided feedback, they justified why they gave us this mark. It is apparent that they have high standards for our reports, although I don't think they were unreasonably high. Only <10% of the cohort managed to score 90%+ on the report according to the grade distribution, and no, I don't think they attempted to mark us on a bell curve like the psych faculty.

Luckily, the postlab/workshop tests weren't overly difficult, they were easy 90+s. I had mixed feelings about the midsem. While it had a lot of accessible marks, some questions required extensive detail of memorisation, I ended up with 42/48 (87.5%) because I didn't memorise the answers to some questions in enough detail. The Peerwise system set up by my profs was a lifesaver, the peer-generated MCQs were even better than Anki flashcards. When I wrote my own Peerwise questions (we have to write 5 for 5% of our final grade), it really made me get into the heads of the assessors and think about what is actually examinable from the lectures.

BMS2062: I have a love-hate relationship with this unit. On one hand, Mariah (my TA) is so helpful during the tutes and always makes sure we have gathered all the info we need to ace those workshop results sheets. On the other hand, the theme tests are atrocious. After failing my first ever assessment in biomed (theme 2 test, worth 2%), I failed my 2nd, which was theme 3 test (also worth 2%) at 47%. They put some really unreasonable trick questions on there not elaborated on adequately in the lectures. I got so mad I made a polite and logical forum post about it, as well as a more informal rant in Monash Stalkerspace. Then some anonymous guy on the forum decided to roast me for posting on Stalkerspace, I dunno why they did that since both of my posts had quite a lot of students agreeing with me. The unit coordinators responded that they actually intended theme tests to be formative to mimic the exam style, they only made them worth marks so people will take them seriously. Apparently, they are allowed to expand on the learning outcomes (which felt kind of out of scope for me, but oh well) because we have access to the internet. I had open book tests and exams before, while most of them are conceptually harder than closed book tests, I never had to confront anything as crazy as the BMS2062 theme tests.

I was panicking after hearing this, but they did assure me that they will release a practice exam which is exactly on par with the real exam difficulty. I haven't finished all the lectures, but as soon as I did, I will be attempting this. From my mates who decided to have a crack at it, it actually isn't too difficult. In addition, a plus is that the unit coordinators made the theme 4 test really easy, I got 90% on it. The dev bio major student rep, with whom I have chatted to before about our academic journeys, saw my Stalkerspace post and kindly told me that it was normal to do poorly on the theme tests, as they were as insanely hard as mine when her boyfriend took the unit.

MAT1, a patient brochure on an assigned genetic disease (I was assigned PKU), was marked very reasonably, it's worth 10% of our grade and I got exactly what I was expecting to get (18.5/21, 88%). Now my MAT2 task is to make a website on PKU. I will finish this by the time midsem break ends so that I can do a beta run of it at the week 10 workshop for some peer and TA feedback.

CHM2922: The midsem I sat in week 6 turned out way better than I expected, I somehow scored 47.5/50 on it, I swear they must have scaled it. I must admit that the mass spec + electrochem section of the course is super difficult, but heading into week 9, the fluorescence stuff is super cool. I finally nailed how to report sig figs on my most recently submitted lab report. For labs, I'm averaging in the mid-high 90s, and I've been full marking the lecture theme quizzes which were open time and open book. I initially thought the maths and physics involved in this physical and analytical chem unit will kill me, but it wasn't too bad.
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on November 29, 2021, 09:46:38 pm
Geez it's been a while since I've updated my journal. My last in-semester assessments and the exams went by without any incidents and now I'm just stuck in the limbo between my last exam and results release, which will be on the 5th as I've signed up for early SMS results. I'm currently doing PHY3990 which is a research project unit and I also have an oral and a lit-review all due within the next 2 weeks. All scholar's program students are required to do a 3990 unit in a biomedical science discipline, and I chose PHY3990 in Julia (Choate)'s educational research group because her expertise is in education and teaching has always been my backup option to medicine. Additionally, I really enjoyed the 2nd year physiology unit (BMS2031) she coordinated last semester. Her style of supervision is very motivating since I'm constantly intellectually engaged and stimulated by my project, which aims to use job ads to identify the generic transferable skills employers expect from biomed graduates. Ari who is cosupervising me even showed me how to code a web scraping bot to extract relevant info from job ads, which would've been impossible by hand. This was a very interesting experience and I can already see that the volume of data has exceeded expectations, which may complicate processing, but I think I'm up for the challenge.

I have gotten my GAMSAT results back which I'm extremely stoked about the day before my last exam for the year (chem), it was 65/67/86 for a 76 overall. This was up from 62/62/70 for a 66 overall in March. With that said, I will not be sitting it again in March 2022, which means this was probably my last ever time writing non-scientific essays (I thought my VCE English exam was my last only to find out that the GAMSAT has an essay section). I will be available via DMs for free S3 help should anyone need it cuz I believe that's the only section I can conclusively offer quality advice for.

PS will be writing unit reviews for BMS2042, 2052, 2062 and CHM2922 after the 13th which is when my lit review is due
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on December 05, 2021, 02:29:50 pm
At this point I have been awake for almost an entire day waiting for my sem 2 results. It's a bittersweet feeling. I should be happy that I successfully defended my GPA against a horrible lockdown semester. But then again, my semester average is only 90.25%, which dragged my WAM down from 92.063 to 91.458, making it my worst semester academically. With that said, I will not be SFRing this sem just in case Monash or any GEMSAS don't like seeing pass/fail grades on transcripts. My impressions on each mark are as follows:

BMS2042 (genetics): 90 HD (expected more than this based on my in sem average which was ~95%, but the exam must've been significantly harder than I thought. It was pretty manageable when I sat it)

BMS2052 (microbio): 86 HD (about where my expectations are, very memorisation heavy and a different style of exam than any of my other subjects which I shall elaborate in the unit review)

BMS2062 (bioinformatics): 90 HD (slightly above expectations, probably guessed a few more questions than expected correctly on that exam, but dragged down by some horrible in sem theme quizzes)

CHM2922 (physical and analytical chem): 95 HD (super happy that chem is carrying my WAM again, and the fact that I got the unit prize + a $250 associated scholarship from the School of Chem for this unit)

Edit: turns out that the scholarship was only $250, the $625 might be actually pay for the PHY3990 unit
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Chocolatemilkshake on December 07, 2021, 10:52:53 pm
Congrats on the amazing results this semester Bill! I hope you are taking some time to relax after a tiring last few months  ;D
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on December 07, 2021, 11:10:58 pm
Congrats on the amazing results this semester Bill! I hope you are taking some time to relax after a tiring last few months  ;D

Thank you for the kind words! Unfortunately, I'm not able to as I'm completing the summer research project unit, but it's super interesting so far
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on December 31, 2021, 12:55:47 pm
My New Year's resolution was to get my unit reviews done, and now I have posted them before 2022 has started. I know this isn't how New Year's resolutions are supposed to work, but that's just my method of beating procrastination since I have the 2nd half of my PHY3990 project to do as soon as the clock strikes midnight.

BMS2042 (genetics): https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=43048.msg1200607#msg1200607
BMS2052 (microbio): https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=43048.msg1200610#msg1200610
BMS2062 (bioinformatics): https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=43048.msg1200592#msg1200592
CHM2922 (physical + analytical chem): https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=43048.msg1200576#msg1200576
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: KenW on December 31, 2021, 09:27:24 pm
Hey Billuminati, it's been very interesting reading your blog! I assume you're 3rd year biomed in 2022 because you took a gap year?

Either way, good luck for next year, and I'm rooting for you to get into medicine! ;) (Or to excel in medicine if you did get accepted.)
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on December 31, 2021, 09:48:37 pm
Hey Billuminati, it's been very interesting reading your blog! I assume you're 3rd year biomed in 2022 because you took a gap year?

Either way, good luck for next year, and I'm rooting for you to get into medicine! ;) (Or to excel in medicine if you did get accepted.)

Yeah it will be my 3rd year. Hope you ace your interviews and get admitted to undergrad med as well!
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on January 19, 2022, 04:35:37 am
Not related to biomed but I felt may help to talk about it to get it off my chest. Mental health has been in the dumps ever since around 2 weeks ago when one of my cats passed away from acute renal failure. It's has not gotten much better since then, it appears as if my mental state can't physically improve at all. I've had him for 8 years and it wasn't easy saying goodbye. In the days immediately after his passing, I literally cried the whole day and ate nothing since I felt I took him for granted and never realised that the day he would leave us was so soon. No matter how much I distract myself with my research project, I still can't avoid missing him or blaming myself for seeing his calls for attention when I'm studying as a nuisance.
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: beep boop on January 19, 2022, 08:38:52 pm
Hi Bill,

I'm sorry for your loss.
I know what's it like to loose a pet. We always think that they're there forever and then before we know it they're gone. We also blame ourselves for not noticing things from them. The thing is, death is inevitable for everything. Such is the cycle of life.
I hope you get better soon.

beep boop
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: KenW on January 20, 2022, 01:19:48 am
Not related to biomed but I felt may help to talk about it to get it off my chest. Mental health has been in the dumps ever since around 2 weeks ago when one of my cats passed away from acute renal failure. It's has not gotten much better since then, it appears as if my mental state can't physically improve at all. I've had him for 8 years and it wasn't easy saying goodbye. In the days immediately after his passing, I literally cried the whole day and ate nothing since I felt I took him for granted and never realised that the day he would leave us was so soon. No matter how much I distract myself with my research project, I still can't avoid missing him or blaming myself for seeing his calls for attention when I'm studying as a nuisance.

I'm so sorry. I really want you to know that it is ok to feel how you feel, but at the same time, please be kind to yourself, because you know that you truly loved your cat. I hope that you never lose sight of your dream of becoming a doctor, and I hope that you know that everyone on AN is here to support you.
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on June 12, 2022, 05:24:43 am
This will be the final post for this journal but I will still stick around the bio and chem boards of AN. Thank you all for your kind words. Due to coming to the realisation that I didn't want to become a doctor for the right reasons, I've decided to discontinue from biomed.  After close reflection, I've come to realise that medicine was not really my calling and I'd prefer to be a teacher than a doctor so I'll defs be active on AN question threads again after last few month's hiatus to practice my explanation skills. Since I can't transfer to a teaching degree at the moment, I'll have to wait until the end of the year to apply through VTAC to enrol in one. In the mean time, I'll experience around a year's worth of the dropout life, it has chosen me  8)
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: tiredandstressed on June 14, 2022, 05:54:43 pm
What an interesting conclusion to one of the most detailed uni journals here!
Curious to know are you transferring to a new course, or are you applying to a masters?
Discontinue suggests the latter, what course are you thinking of appying?
What's your plans for your gap year this, hope you can do alot while we out of lockdown!
What subjects are you planning to teach in?
Wishing you all the best in your future ventures and I hope you enjoy what you end up studying.
Title: Re: Bill's Ride through Monash Biomed
Post by: Billuminati on June 14, 2022, 07:05:26 pm
What an interesting conclusion to one of the most detailed uni journals here!
Curious to know are you transferring to a new course, or are you applying to a masters?
Discontinue suggests the latter, what course are you thinking of appying?
What's your plans for your gap year this, hope you can do alot while we out of lockdown!
What subjects are you planning to teach in?
Wishing you all the best in your future ventures and I hope you enjoy what you end up studying.

I'll be applying to Bach of Education at Monash since the chem minor I did (as well as some biomed units) can transfer credits to satisfy the chem and bio specialisations which is what I plan on teaching

During this year I plan learning the year 12 spesh course since I was told that I might potentially be asked by some schools to teach some maths classes instead of teaching within my specialisations. I'm continuing to volunteer here and elsewhere to gain experience communicating concepts to students