1. Do you enjoy it?
Not exactly. There are some parts (see below) that I really like about biology, but on the whole I think it's probably my least favourite subject.
2. What do you like about it?
I really liked learning about evolution. It was the one area which really fascinated me.
Moving away from content, I like how biology is such a popular subject so you're never short of resources for it.
3. What do you dislike about it?
I don't like how much memorising and rote-learning is involved in biology. Of course like all science, there is understanding and analysising, but I think biology (along with psych) is the most reliant on memorising compared to maths and other sciences.
4. What does the work involve? (memorising, analysing, etc)
See above lol.
Of course maybe it's just that biology hasn't 'clicked' for me yet, because I know many people who do well in biology will disagree with me when I say bio is mostly rote-learning.
5. How much do you study at home/study period a week?
I don't really keep tabs on my study hours, it's more like studying whenver I need to rather than ticking off the hours. But on the whole I'd say it's about an hour per day on average for bio.
6. What are exams and sacs like?
I know every school does internal SACs differently, but I think for most schools it's four internal SACs (2 per Area of Study) plus a practical report/poster.
The end-of-year VCAA exam is split into multiple choice (40 marks) and short answer (80 marks). It's 2.5 hours with 15 minutes of reading time.
7. Favourite topic?
DNA manipulation and evolution
8. Worst topic?
For me, literally everything else, but particularly immunity
9. Tips/Tricks?
I think my biggest tip is to do bio because you enjoy it. In my case, I think I would've enjoyed physics or spesh much more so I see bio as a bit of a chore.
If you also do chem: a lot of students who also do chem fall into the trap of thinking they'd naturally be good at bio as there's some overlaps in content. This is rarely the case.
10. What are your teachers like?
My teacher for 3/4 bio is a new teacher who just graduated from uni last year. It's cool to have such a young teacher because he relates to the students more, and he also has more experience with VCE bio as he went through the same thing himself recently.
11. What is your class like?
Our class is mostly made up of younger year levels (year 10s and 11s) doing bio as their early 3/4. In fact, out of the 24 students in our class, only 5 are year 12s.
12. Why are you taking biology?
I'm hoping to study veterinary medicine at Melbourne Uni in the future. While biology is not a prereq, it is highly recommended, and there are multiple compulsory biology units in uni if you wish to study veterinary medicine.
13. Do you plan on having a career involving biology?
Not exactly
pure biology but as I hope to become a veterinarian, it will of course involve bio knowledge.
14. How well do you think you’re doing/you did
Not very well. I'm currently ranked in the lower 1/3rd of my cohort and my bio teacher predicted for me a raw study score of 30 rip.