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March 19, 2024, 07:13:37 pm

Author Topic: 🌱Surviving and Succeeding in Biology🌱  (Read 6185 times)  Share 

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EllingtonFeint

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🌱Surviving and Succeeding in Biology🌱
« on: August 19, 2019, 08:05:18 pm »
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🌱Surviving and Succeeding in Biology🌱

Hey! So, uh, welcome to my biology guide. I’m so clueless about using this forum so this took like forever to figure out how to do but whatever. It’s here now. Have fun reading!

🌱Introduction to biology


I feel like I need to put this here in case I change my signature thing later. I got a 49 RAW in Biology. I was pretty happy with that- for some reason I kept thinking I'd get a 43. I have no idea why, so it was a very pleasant surprise.

🌱SACs

They’re scary, right? I remember starting T W O year 11 subjects in year 10 and not even KNOWING what a SAC even was. Thanks, school for preparing us so well. Speaking of preparation, I don’t think I even learned anything in year 9 science so I felt seriously overwhelmed. I remember staring at my teacher as she pointed to the whiteboard and talked about diffusion or whatever and just freaking out. AS far as I knew, osmosis was just some kinda surfie brand?? Whatever. I freaked. I actually had a full on break down and burst into tears in front of my teacher after like the first week cos I was Just. So. Stressed.  :-[ And had no idea about what was going on. That was unfortunate. But thankfully, my teacher was so nice and supportive.

So, uh, I didn’t even know what a SAC was when I started biology and I totally freaked but I soon learned the S E C R E T to like, actually succeeding in SACs in Biology is ...
*USE YOUR LOGBOOK.
^I’m just gonna leave that there. Make of it what you will, but I’m telling you right now, –and TAKE THIS ADVICE, please- your logbook is a metaphorical lifesaver! FILL IT with information.


🌱T H E   E X A M


You know how when you get your study scores you can get like a sheet where it says oh yeah you got Q 13d wrong? Well, I didn’t know that when I was in year 11, but I saw that you can so I bought it and they sent me a letter saying stuff like that. You can drop LOTS of marks. Like I don’t remember exactly how many I lost but it was quite a lot, like I think nearly 20?? That could be totally wrong, I’ll try look for the sheet and edit this… if I remember stuff. I lose things. A Lot. But the point is YOU CAN LOSE MARKS so don’t freak when you’re doing practise exams. I wish somebody had told ME that! Speaking of which…

🌱Practise Exams.

I did like 25+ practise biology exams and it was K I L L E R.
THIS IS IMPORTANT: make sure you actually mark your practise exams. Like be WAY HARSH when you mark. AND –this is very important !- make a note of all your mistakes! Like fill an entire book with this and USE it when you revise. This definitely helps you to target problem areas and do the best you possibly can on the exam ! 🔬

I lost motivation so quick and it was awful. All I wanted to do was go lie out in the sun and read Classical English Literature and I was stuck inside STUDYING. But you gotta do it.
I felt like I was gonna figuratively die so I was like Okay, you know what, I NEED motivation!! 💎 So I did some online shopping on The Iconic and ordered a bunch of stuff making sure that the arrival of my precious lil parcel coincided with the day of my exam so I could finish the wretched thing and come home to my gorgeous packages. ✨

BUT It doesn’t have to be something crazy like that. It can be a new book (I am alwaysss ordering books around SAC and Exam times), or a chocolate bar, or a day out at the driving range or an episode of your favourite TV show!! Anything- FIND MOTIVATION.💌


🌱NOTE:
Maybe I’m just an oddity, but I actually really enjoyed the exam. It was so chill and nice and I felt really clever after all that revision (STUDY- you’ll feel good about it!) Also I finished pretty early so I went back through the exam a tonne, corrected stuff and fussed about that weird algae question… was it algae? I don’t remember.

~🌱ALSO DID ANYBODY NOTICE THAT IN THE 2018 BIOLOGY EXAM, IT MENTIONS BILLY AND SHEENA. And they’re like marine biologists or divers or something??! I mean did anybody ever read Goosebumps?? Billy and Sheena from Creep from the Deep and Deep Trouble?! Anyways. I was pretty happy when I saw that. Felt like a sign from the biology gods or something.

🌱MNEMONICS

OKAY. This is seriously not stressed enough. MNEMONICS are like the best thing ever. Fun fact: Mnemosyne is the Greek goddess of memory. But really, make up stories and stuff to go along with your study. They help H E A P S. And then stick them up all over the place. So for example, to memorise the stop codons I got little sticky notes and wrote UAA, UGA, UAG and stuck them on my mirror. But that’s not exactly easy to remember, right? So I wrote U Are Away, U Go Away, U Are Gone. And so it looks like my mirror’s tryna give me a really bad pep talk or encourage me to run away of whatevs. (My brother used my bathroom once and he was like why is your mirror hating on you?) The point is, that’s easy to remember! It sounds like an angry teacher or a parent or something so if you make a lil memorable sentence like that, I find it’s way easier to recall things. So yeah, mnemonics.

🌱Note taking


Okay. This. THIS. Is kinda hard for me to talk about. I remember spending L I T E R A L hours writing out notes from that Heinemann textbook I do NOT recommend it. That textbook was an actual joy to read (yeah, okay whatevs maybe I’m a nerd, but I really do adore biology) but it was so ~voluminous. LIKE superrr heavy and there’s so much -too much- stuff in there. So, in my opinion note taking like that is a huge waste of time. Some resources like the A+ Biol Notes books are brilliant and you can just refer to those to get concisely summarised info (P L E A S E don’t kill me here, but I wasn’t very into the ATAR Notes summary notes… the topic tests were alright though and this forum is utterly legendary- ohmigosh you have no idea HOW grateful I am to the people on here.

I get that sometimes you’ll need to make notes to concisely explain some stuff (DUDE, Transcription and Translation was SO hard to understand first time around and it was so hard to find a good resource that explained it really simply!!) but I always preferred flowcharts and drawings (maybe cos I’m like a part time artist) to hand writing out tonnes of notes (contrary to what this guide suggests haha).

🌱ENJOY STUFF


I despise methods. ❕Sorry. I just do not see the point of integration and differentiation and whatever and if I regret any part of my high school career (? Who says career??) it’s picking methods cos I HATE it. With a burning passion. I wish I’d chosen art or something instead. If you’ve chosen biology then I hope you love it as much as I did, as I do. I still reminisce about learning about homo erectus and stuff like all the time and am always interrogating my friends about what they’re learning in class. I think that it’s actually so interesting and ~tangible… not abstract like imaginary numbers or whatever. Sometimes though, when you’re studying heaps, you can get so caught up in that study grind that you forget to take a step back and actually ~enjoy stuff. 🌸



🌱TUTORING


SO. I did NOT have a biology tutor. 🌿(Or any tutor for that matter.) But I really wished that I had one. My bio teacher had a split class so she was teaching years 11 and 12 in the one lesson and the classes were both really quite big. So there wasn’t much time for like one-on-one stuff which kinda sucked. Also biology is SO heavy, I know. So I really would’ve liked someone who I could videochat or message with random questions whenever and work together on concepts I didn’t understand or spend an afternoon revising with before a SAC so I think maybe you should get one.

~Speaking of which, I’m an English tutor (PERFECT SCORE for all my SACs for Unit 3 English and my teacher is a seriously harsh marker, so, uh, if in need of some English help ~~) (Also tutored students in the subject WHILE doing 3/4 English and managed to help a friend go from a C grade to a study score of 42!) I tutor Biology, PE and English professionally with a company and also do private tutoring.

PM me if interested. I can also do like videochat sessions or like actual real life sessions depending on area, send you my actually really good resources, (give my secrets hahah), one-on-one SAC revision or whatever and you can hit me up with random 3am questions you may have (ATAR Notes is pretty good with those late night questions!!) 🌿

OKAY. Woah. That’s a LOT of writing. Hope this helps someone!! Excuse the typos- I hate them too, but I’m so dead right now. Maybe I’ll fix them later. Please let me know if this thing helps (cos it took agesss to write) and I really do hope it’s even remotely useful! Please don’t be scared to message me! I hope you all adore biology 🌱 as much as I do!  ;)



« Last Edit: June 02, 2020, 03:07:30 pm by EllingtonFeint »
Biology 🌱 [49] |  English [47]

Surviving and Succeeding in Biology:
https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=187145.msg1129188

J_Rho

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Re: 🌱Surviving and Succeeding in Biology🌱
« Reply #1 on: September 02, 2019, 07:40:46 pm »
+5
I actually love this thread!! I'm competing 3 & 4 Biol as a Year 11 and it's so difficult but this thread honestly helped me especially the parts about practice exams and mnemonics!
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EllingtonFeint

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Re: 🌱Surviving and Succeeding in Biology🌱
« Reply #2 on: September 18, 2019, 11:16:02 am »
+6
I actually love this thread!! I'm competing 3 & 4 Biol as a Year 11 and it's so difficult but this thread honestly helped me especially the parts about practice exams and mnemonics!

I swear I replied to this comment but apparently not!
Thank you so much for reading and replying- it means so much to me that it's helpful! I put in so much time making this thing, so it's nice to know that SOMEBODY out there thinks that it's useful!  ;D
Are you doing any other 3/4 subjects this year or just biology??
Good luck with all your VCE studies! :)
Biology 🌱 [49] |  English [47]

Surviving and Succeeding in Biology:
https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=187145.msg1129188

J_Rho

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Re: 🌱Surviving and Succeeding in Biology🌱
« Reply #3 on: September 19, 2019, 09:10:16 am »
+3
I swear I replied to this comment but apparently not!
Thank you so much for reading and replying- it means so much to me that it's helpful! I put in so much time making this thing, so it's nice to know that SOMEBODY out there thinks that it's useful!  ;D
Are you doing any other 3/4 subjects this year or just biology??
Good luck with all your VCE studies! :)

Im only completing 3/4 Bio this year as my school restricts how many 3/4 subjects you can do in year 11.
Keep up the great work! I told some of my fellow biol students about this and they got a lot from reading it!
 If you don't mind me asking what were your SAC scores as exam score?
— VCE —
English 30, Further Maths 33, Biology 33, Legal Studies 27, Psychology 32

— University —
Bachelor of Nursing @ Monash
Bachelor of Counselling & Psychological Science @ ACAP

Joseph41

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Re: 🌱Surviving and Succeeding in Biology🌱
« Reply #4 on: September 19, 2019, 12:29:50 pm »
+2
I swear I replied to this comment but apparently not!
Thank you so much for reading and replying- it means so much to me that it's helpful! I put in so much time making this thing, so it's nice to know that SOMEBODY out there thinks that it's useful!  ;D
Are you doing any other 3/4 subjects this year or just biology??
Good luck with all your VCE studies! :)


Can guarantee it's helped a lot of people!

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colline

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Re: 🌱Surviving and Succeeding in Biology🌱
« Reply #5 on: September 19, 2019, 12:58:31 pm »
+4
Hey! Thank you so much for this guide, it is definitely incredibly helpful ^-^

Regarding practice exams, did you only complete VCAA ones, or did you do any company ones as well? If you did company exams, which ones did you find to be the most helpful or most similar to VCAA's exams?

Congrats on your amaaaazing score and thanks so much for taking the time to write this!

VCE: Literature [50] Methods [50] Further [48] Chemistry [40] Biology [33]
2022: Bachelor of Science (Mathematical Economics) @ ANU

EllingtonFeint

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Re: 🌱Surviving and Succeeding in Biology🌱
« Reply #6 on: September 20, 2019, 09:58:02 am »
0
Im only completing 3/4 Bio this year as my school restricts how many 3/4 subjects you can do in year 11.
Keep up the great work! I told some of my fellow biol students about this and they got a lot from reading it!
 If you don't mind me asking what were your SAC scores as exam score?

Awh you're so nice :)

Sooo, according to that official 3/4 study score document thing, I got...
Grade 1: A+
Grade 2: A+
Grade 3: A+

And that all came out to be 49 :)

BUT I think it can vary slightly
Biology 🌱 [49] |  English [47]

Surviving and Succeeding in Biology:
https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=187145.msg1129188

EllingtonFeint

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Re: 🌱Surviving and Succeeding in Biology🌱
« Reply #7 on: September 20, 2019, 10:05:53 am »
+1
Hey! Thank you so much for this guide, it is definitely incredibly helpful ^-^

Regarding practice exams, did you only complete VCAA ones, or did you do any company ones as well? If you did company exams, which ones did you find to be the most helpful or most similar to VCAA's exams?

Congrats on your amaaaazing score and thanks so much for taking the time to write this!

OooOOooohh I have multiple replies! How wonderful! You're the sweetest!

I completed a bunch of different exams; I'll list them below. :)

-VCAA ones
-ATAR Notes topic testsssss
-STAV Units 3/4 Exam
-NEAP exams
-QATs
-Those ones in the lil green Biolnotes summary books

I think that I thought that the NEAP ones were good? I can't exactly remember. I adored those small green books though. THEY were good !
I think the best part about utilising  (what kinda kid says utilising ?!  ::) ) a whole bunch of different 2018 company ones was that they were all relevant to the new study design as opposed to sifting through past study design exams and finding you got like 30% cos everything's irrelevant now??
Just try expose yourself to a tonne of them.
Also, I hated the Checkpoints book for some reason (honestly, it is very good for PE) but it's good in the way it arranges questions according to the topic so maybe try that?? :)

Biology 🌱 [49] |  English [47]

Surviving and Succeeding in Biology:
https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=187145.msg1129188