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March 28, 2024, 10:57:44 pm

Author Topic: "Sine"  (Read 13728 times)

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Sine

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Re: "Sine"
« Reply #15 on: July 09, 2019, 02:23:33 pm »
+4
Hi really love your university journey journal. Any updates so far?
Hey, thank you for your interest in my journal! :)

I'll be updating it very soon, hopefully, I will be able to summarise how I found the first half of the year to be(I will try to go into detail).

In semester 2 I will definitely be better and try to update the journal more frequently (I'm thinking weekly after each week of uni).

~Sine

gameboy99

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Re: "Sine"
« Reply #16 on: July 15, 2019, 07:16:30 pm »
+3
Hey, thank you for your interest in my journal! :)

I'll be updating it very soon, hopefully, I will be able to summarise how I found the first half of the year to be(I will try to go into detail).

In semester 2 I will definitely be better and try to update the journal more frequently (I'm thinking weekly after each week of uni).

~Sine

That sounds great... can't wait!  :D
2016: Biology [39]
2017: English [39], Chemistry [42], Further [46] Methods (CAS) [41]
ATAR: 95.20

Sine

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Re: "Sine"
« Reply #17 on: July 15, 2019, 08:59:19 pm »
+10
Hopefully, I can use this thread for my experiences in semester 2 at university and also open it up to any questions from anyone reading.
If anyone has any questions (that aren’t too personal) in regards to anything – be it VCE, university etc please post in this thread rather than using the personal message feature so everyone can benefit.


So, in my first semester this year I completed BMS3031 which is a third year “capstone” biomed unit called Molecular Mechanisms of Disease. It was probably one of the most difficult subject (and content heavy subject) I have taken to date. This semester the vast majority of my study time was probably put into this subject with my other two subjects just kind of fitting around what I needed to do for this one. It covered many topics from cancer, infection/immunity, neurodegeneration and even DOHaD amongst a few others. Note that the topics covered in this unit changes year by year to stay up to date with any discoveries in the past year. This was a “double subject” so it meant it was worth 12 credit points and was double the workload – e.g. double the number of lectures of a normal unit and all of this alongside both a workshop and tutorial. Apparently, there was meant to be another 2-hour seminar, but they removed that this year.
Just a note that I might reuse some information from here when I make a review for the subject in the future.
Weekly the lectures were in 2-hour session blocks with a 10-minute break usually in the middle. They were quite content heavy but that is to be expected with a biomed unit. The best part of the lecture series for me was that many of the lectures were linked so it helped with understanding and learning of the concepts. 

Workshops were also placed throughout the semester we had 6 THEORY workshops on different topics – from memory each topic got a workshop except for the last one which was neurodegeneration. You could think of a workshop as the equivalent of another lecture or two depending on how much content was covered. However, I felt learning the workshop content was aided very well by structured questions to go through and also the ability to work with our friends and make new friends. Often at the end of the workshop the unit coordinator would randomly select a group to present the answers from the workshop – the coordinator or lecturer present at the time would correct any mistakes which was helpful for those students and all the audience to make a note of. Also, workshops had quite a bit of overlap between some lectures (not all of them though – some was completely differnet content). Usually at the end of each workshop there would be a quiz which was worth a small percentage of the unit grade. For this first workshop we also had a quiz at the very start of the workshop but they removed that for the following 5 workshops.

In this timeslot throughout the semester we also had some “Professional Development” and Careers workshops which I think are the same ones you can take through connect. For some students this stuff could be pretty useful if you haven’t had much experience in work or needed help finding work and getting prepared for a career after graduation.

As I said – alongside these workshops we also had tutorials. This ran for 2 hours in classes of about 20-25 students with 3 tutors. Each week we would be doing something different – for instance, one we week when went into detail of a case study for a patient taking warfarin and the medication not working and trying to explain why it wasn’t working and what we could do to help her - since our preceding lecture series was on pharmacology. We also had a week where we looked at certain ethical issues surroudning the scenario where a scientist had faked their data. Analysing the consequences of this and what we can do to prevent it and maintain trust within the community. Generally, these types of weeks the assessment was only 1-2% and submitted in-class or for the more difficult tasks 48 hours post class.
The MST for this unit occurred in week 7 during one of the lecture slots. However, this test “only” covered the first 3 weeks of contents (precision/personalsied medicine and pharmacology). So, it was on all the lectures and the two theory workshops. Overall, I found the MST to be a good difficulty - definitely some questions you had to put a lot of thought into but also one’s where you could easily answer in a matter of seconds.

The big in-semester assessments were MATs – Major Assessment Tasks – there were three of them and they were each worth 10% each.  Probably the most controversial part of the unit – very mixed feelings about these tasks. Personally, once I got used to how it ran and what was expected after the first MAT I thought the second and third were quite manageable.
The first two MATs were done in groups randomly chosen. The topic of the first one was certain drugs that act as therapeutics for certain diseases (cancer, schizophrenia, AIDS, Rheumatoid Arthritis). A lot of this dependent on how good your group was imo. The second topic was the career, findings, future of a lab head at Monash University. So, you would research a certain researcher’s career and also delve into their findings. Finally, the last MAT was on Biomedical News and Views article. It is basically something a little bit simpler than a literature review but more complex than a good media article. Definitely more aligned with the science side of it rather than media reporting though. The aim of is was to convey a certain finding (in the past two years) in a context and language that someone who didn’t have a background in the specific area of study would understand. Although you could assume basic scientific knowledge. E.g. Analysing a new cancer thearpy so that a physicist could understand it.

The exam was an e-Exam, so each student was assigned a computer at the exam venue. The exam was 190 minutes in length with no reading time. The experience was probably a bit better than I expected, it helped that they gave us blank sheets of paper if we wanted to write anything down – which I found helpful. But, I think not many people used it. Each section of the exam was written by a differnet lecturer or multiple lecturers, so it was split up into 6 different sections. (The two topics from the MST was not covered here).


gameboy99

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Re: "Sine"
« Reply #18 on: July 19, 2019, 08:49:32 am »
+1
Wow great insight into first semester of third year! Wondering if you could also provide your experience of 2nd year second semester as that is what I'll be facing next??  :)
2016: Biology [39]
2017: English [39], Chemistry [42], Further [46] Methods (CAS) [41]
ATAR: 95.20

Sine

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Re: "Sine"
« Reply #19 on: July 23, 2019, 01:28:57 pm »
+2
Wow great insight into first semester of third year! Wondering if you could also provide your experience of 2nd year second semester as that is what I'll be facing next??  :)
Sure will do!
what units are you taking this semester?

gameboy99

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Re: "Sine"
« Reply #20 on: July 23, 2019, 07:01:55 pm »
+1
Sure will do!
what units are you taking this semester?

I'm doing BMS2042, BMS2052, BMS2062 and DEV2022.  :)
2016: Biology [39]
2017: English [39], Chemistry [42], Further [46] Methods (CAS) [41]
ATAR: 95.20

Sine

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Re: "Sine"
« Reply #21 on: August 02, 2019, 06:37:02 pm »
+1
I'm doing BMS2042, BMS2052, BMS2062 and DEV2022.  :)
Hey! I definitely haven't forgotten about this - will post in the next few days :)

DEV2022 is the only one I haven't done, however, some of my friends are doing it this semester and some did it last year.

gameboy99

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Re: "Sine"
« Reply #22 on: August 04, 2019, 05:07:40 pm »
+1
Hey! I definitely haven't forgotten about this - will post in the next few days :)

DEV2022 is the only one I haven't done, however, some of my friends are doing it this semester and some did it last year.

Sounds good. Thanks once again for the amazing insight.  :D
2016: Biology [39]
2017: English [39], Chemistry [42], Further [46] Methods (CAS) [41]
ATAR: 95.20

Sine

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Re: "Sine"
« Reply #23 on: August 05, 2019, 06:00:44 pm »
+8
Here is my BMS2042 review that I did last year - I feel i'll probably just repeat the same stuff here and below is how I found 2062.

Alrighty, last year I completed BMS2062 – Introduction to bioinformatics. The title sounds like a lot of use of computers and what not. There definitely is a big focus on however I found them to teach us very and you don’t have to be great at IT to do well. The thoery component is like any other biomed unit – although a little bit more about databases/searches and using software to look at protien structure so a bit of it will have overlap with your practical parts. However, you still go into some biological concepts like neurodegeneration, mRNA, protein folding/misfolding etc

The practical component they have done well to create worksheets with really clear steps in each practical so that basically anyone who is careful get this stuff done quite well. I think the most difficult part would be actually synthesizing the important information from the data you find in databases.  I should note that as you go further in the unit – more and more will be assumed of you – so it is important that you understand each practical worksheet. I think I had overall 10 practical worksheets worth 2% each. The weighting for this component of the unit I felt was not that great since some weeks you had to put a lot of time into it to get full marks. However, some weeks you could do it within the time of the 2 hour class so it may have balanced out. For us worksheets were due 48 hours after the end of our practical, the main reason for this was so that we could get feedback quickly. My tutor was quite good and usually marked everythign within 4-5 days. Also, most tutors are very open to students asking questions and helping but like always this is tutor dependent.

For my year instead of a mid-semester test (which was there in 2017) we had 5 small theory tests. I think in 2017 with the MST the cohort did quite badly  - maybe because they had MSTs for all the core units that year  - idk really. Anyway the small theory test two of them worth 2% and three of them worth 3% - roughly  10 questions with some questions being double pointers (if application). Generally, the questions are quite doable if you have revised the corresponding lectures. However, sometimes there are some application questions at the end. I found them great since you could just derive the answer on the spot but for students who heavily rely on rote learning it wasn’t too great. So, I believe for this unit there is a large importance for actual understanding of concepts and being able to answer questions which you may have not considered or thought about before.

There are also two major assessment tasks (MAT) worth 10% and 15%. One of them was due in the middle of the semester and the second one due at the end of the semester. For these tasks all students were allocated to one of 4 different genetic disease conditiosn. I got phenylketonuria and that was the topic that we used for both assessments. This was quite nice since we were able to use a lot of the information from our first one in the second one and also didn’t have to start over and learn a whole new condition. The first task was to create a brochure on the disease with the target audience being families/people with this condition. That meant that we couldn’t really use the normal biomed language and had to bring it down to a standard of a lay person. You could assume year 10 science knowledge. Which doesn’t help much for the things that you need to discuss. Like mutations/protein folding/cofactors/clinical aspect. You also had to include a few diagrams that were self-made, this theme of creating visuals for an audience becomes quite important in third year as well. For my topic one of my diagrams was a family tree displaying how one could get phenylketonuria (both parents needed to be carriers) and then outline the chance of the child having the condition. Another image I did was a simple explanation of how genetic code mutations = gene mutations = amino acid mutations and showed the most common mutaiton there which was splicing IIRC. MAT2 was on similar concepts of MAT1 although some extensions – since MAT1 focused on the actual gene a lot more and MAT2 was more on the protein. Also, MAT2 was a website – we had to use google websites so it wasn’t too bad to make, even if you aren’t too create. The practical workshops prepare you well for both assessment tasks since one of them is dedicated to building a page of a website and also another one is using PowerPoint to create self-made images in the context of biology.

The end of semester exam was a paper based exam worth 40% of your total mark for the unit. From memory there was 50 multiple choice questions. 30 of which were worth 1 mark and 20 of them work 2 marks. I don’t think there was too much of a difference between the questions though. The 2 markers were probably more leaning towards extended multiple choice where there was a specific scenario and you had to derive information from that – which wasn’t necessarily what you might have learnt/studied so it is great if you like application of knowledge.

gameboy99

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Re: "Sine"
« Reply #24 on: April 04, 2020, 09:41:36 am »
+5
Hi Sine,
I have loved the way you have taken everyone throughout your university journey.
Any updates?  :)
2016: Biology [39]
2017: English [39], Chemistry [42], Further [46] Methods (CAS) [41]
ATAR: 95.20

Sine

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  • Great Wonder of ATAR Notes
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  • Posts: 5135
  • Respect: +2103
Re: "Sine"
« Reply #25 on: April 14, 2020, 12:51:58 pm »
+5
Hi Sine,
I have loved the way you have taken everyone throughout your university journey.
Any updates?  :)
Hey, sorry for the late response.
I will still be writing a few university subject reviews (MTH2132, BCH2011, BMS3031, PHA2022, STA1010, BMS3052) from what I did last year which should hopefully be a good summary of so there will definitely be a few updates soon.

gameboy99

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Re: "Sine"
« Reply #26 on: April 14, 2020, 01:44:18 pm »
+2
Awesome, can't wait :D
Appreciate your time and effort to write these reviews!
2016: Biology [39]
2017: English [39], Chemistry [42], Further [46] Methods (CAS) [41]
ATAR: 95.20