I wish I had more memorization courses...

Friggin' orgo...ruining my year.

I like memorization courses, they are like a break from the usual stuff. Its nice to be able to just read things over and over until it sticks rather than having to do math questions over and over and pray that what you get on the test resembles the questions you've done for practice.

Originally Posted by britb

I wish I had more memorization courses...

Friggin' orgo...ruining my year.

Hahaha I'm like the opposite.

<3 Orgo, hate most of my other courses (except Physics).

I actually tried just doing the pathways for cell bio in my head/in my own words - the problem is when doing the practice midterms/old midterms I realized they just ask questions straight from the goddamned notes (i.e., taking a picture from a slide and asking you to label it).

**** that. I'd rather fail than memorize blindly.

Aside from math, are there really any courses that aren't pure memorization? I think it's a good thing, it means you're learning a bunch of new stuff. I'd be pissed if I walked into an exam and everything was common sense.

its easy to memorize the stuff I guess... but that gets so pointless and boring... bio is actually interested if u take the time to understand what your memorizing... plus- that helps you do so much better in the course.

Originally Posted by hamnahx02

its easy to memorize the stuff I guess... but that gets so pointless and boring... bio is actually interested if u take the time to understand what your memorizing... plus- that helps you do so much better in the course.

quoted for truth. While the course is a memorization style, the memorization doesn't mean anything without comprehension. It is the comprehension of the content that separates the truly smart from everyone else in university.

Originally Posted by REPLEKIA/.

Aside from math, are there really any courses that aren't pure memorization? I think it's a good thing, it means you're learning a bunch of new stuff. I'd be pissed if I walked into an exam and everything was common sense.

Yeah but you're acquiring knowledge you could have obtained from Google. Why the hell do you have to learn it when I can google a superior answer to anything you can say in 5 seconds?

This isn't the 80s anymore, where knowledge was something hard to find.

And to answer your question: yes, there are quite a few.

Physics - you might memorize a couple basic formulas, (e.g., Coulomb's law) and then just fiddle around with it to get other versions. And no two physics questions are the same.

Organic chemistry - >________>
If you memorize you will fail.

Any sort of math, computer science course, physics, some chemistry courses, a lot of problem solving and little memorization.

I love memorization courses. They're my highest marks so far.
Yay for being able to read something once and remembering it.

Although I do hate paying 700 dollars for something I could find on Google, I've accepted that it's part of university and to just cash in on the opportunity to do well.

Originally Posted by Alchemist11

Yeah but you're acquiring knowledge you could have obtained from Google. Why the hell do you have to learn it when I can google a superior answer to anything you can say in 5 seconds?

This isn't the 80s anymore, where knowledge was something hard to find.

Try dropping out of university and putting 'really good at googling stuff' on a resume. That doesn't fly very well with potential employers. Besides, for higher level knowledge you need the proper comprehension of the base material. Google is a decent tool, but only up to a certain level of knowledge. I find that you can find two kinds of academic information on the internet; the first is dumbed down for the masses and easy to understand, the second is publication grade paper that leave you scratching your head since the info you need to comprehend the topic is not available in the 'dumbed down for the masses' articles. Proper education will take you all the way through to understanding the most difficult concepts without having to look things up. I.e. Looking up how jet fuel works does no make me a rocket scientist.

Originally Posted by Alchemist11

And to answer your question: yes, there are quite a few.

Physics - you might memorize a couple basic formulas, (e.g., Coulomb's law) and then just fiddle around with it to get other versions. And no two physics questions are the same.

Organic chemistry - >________>
If you memorize you will fail.

Any sort of math, computer science course, physics, some chemistry courses, a lot of problem solving and little memorization.

I said aside from math in my post. phyiscs= applied math so I won't count it. While I agree chem does have a fair amount of application, you still need to memorize a whole bunch to even be able to apply most formulas so I wouldn't classify it as a non-memorization course.

Originally Posted by REPLEKIA/.

Try dropping out of university and putting 'really good at googling stuff' on a resume. That doesn't fly very well with potential employers. Besides, for higher level knowledge you need the proper comprehension of the base material. Google is a decent tool, but only up to a certain level of knowledge. I find that you can find two kinds of academic information on the internet; the first is dumbed down for the masses and easy to understand, the second is publication grade paper that leave you scratching your head since the info you need to comprehend the topic is not available in the 'dumbed down for the masses' articles. Proper education will take you all the way through to understanding the most difficult concepts without having to look things up. I.e. Looking up how jet fuel works does no make me a rocket scientist.


I said aside from math in my post. phyiscs= applied math so I won't count it. While I agree chem does have a fair amount of application, you still need to memorize a whole bunch to even be able to apply most formulas so I wouldn't classify it as a non-memorization course.

I meant google as an example, not the end-all of resources.

There are libraries, research articles, google, etc - in essence all the knowledge you could ever need is free.

And you can't bring in "employers" when we're talking about intelligence - potential jobs and really university itself has very little to do with intelligence.

Anyway I gotta dip to class but we'll discuss this later maybe ^_^

But my point is, why am I memorizing things that I can literally find when I type "wiki sar1" - the exact same info I have to know is on the wiki page, but I'm sitting here memorizing it like an idiot as if in the real world I won't have google beside me.

Originally Posted by AelyaS

Yeah, its one of the first year courses. I kind of figured it was probably building blocks for upper year courses. Still, going back to the memorization aspect of it, its killing her. I think part of her frustration lies in the fact that she had different expectations of the course, and wasn't planning to look into Linguistics seriously, just took the course out of interest/someone told her it was easy (LOL)

Some of the upper year Ling courses are cross listed with Psych courses too, like 3B03 and 3C03. If she's planning on going into Psych, it could prove handy. Otherwise, yeah, shitty for her

Originally Posted by Alchemist11

But my point is, why am I memorizing things that I can literally find when I type "wiki sar1" - the exact same info I have to know is on the wiki page, but I'm sitting here memorizing it like an idiot as if in the real world I won't have google beside me.

The point was it's much better to know and understand everything off hand as opposed to just going to google to find what you need. Not only will it be faster, it'll be more reliable. Google is nice but there are some pieces of oddly specific info you need that are really hard to find with it.

Biology courses are quite heavy with respect to memorization. The lower year courses (like Microbiology and Cell Biology)are especially more memorization-based than applied. The higher-level courses however begin to start using the information from the lower-level courses in a more applied fashion.

A lot of the pathways that you're forced to learn in Cell Biology, like the fine, fine details of cell cycle might seem pointless, but understanding these tiny details are crucial in understanding the pathology of cancer and possible cancer-targeted therapeutics.

The same really applies for microbiology (even though when I took that course I contemplated suicide every day) - But a lot of the viral and bacterial structures/life cycles that you learn in that class become relevant in courses like Immunology (with respect to finding antiviral/antibacterial treatments)

Second year animal physiology also comes off as very memorization heavy (and it is), but the tests are structured around testing the material in a very applied and integrated fashion.

Originally Posted by mike_302

Should've went into engineering :( Sorry

By 'engineering', you probably mean 'math'.

Originally Posted by REPLEKIA/.

I said aside from math in my post. phyiscs= applied math so I won't count it..

I wouldn't say that - and I'm sure a physics major would agree with me. Applied math is applied math. Physics is physics. Of course, physics uses some applied math (and some 'theoretical' math, for that matter) and applied (and pure) math is influenced by physics, among other sciences, but physics isn't applied math, and applied math isn't physics.

Originally Posted by Alchemist11

Any sort of math, computer science course, physics, some chemistry courses, a lot of problem solving and little memorization.

Not necessarily true. The first-year math courses (more specifically, the 1A/1AA series of calculus courses) was memorisation-heavy (by math standards). By that I mean that you could have done well without memorising, but most people just memorised problem-types and still came out well - this is, from my experience, all-too-common in the maths for engineering and science - instead of memorising 'facts', people memorise 'methods'. I won't comment on compsci, since I haven't taken any, and I haven't taken enough chemistry (only 1A/1AA) to give a decent answer, but from the 1A/1AA series, memorising methods seemed to be not only common, but encouraged. This is probably different in upper-years, though.

IMO, Biology is mainly about understanding and little about memorization. I don't want to sound boastful, but in grades 11 and 12 I was in the top three in my Biology class, and I thoroughly understood almost all the material. In grade 12, it was basically me and this other guy that that kept the class average up there. We were the class lol. And he too understood bio, not memorized it. Bio is all about understanding. You can't memorize it...it's too much.

I really enjoy bio, and a lot of it comes from understand the concepts and processes that it's teaching, not the other way around. I've heard so many people complaining that bio is pure memorization, and I just don't understand where they're coming from. Maybe I'll find out in 1A03.

Human evolution on the other hand is pretty much crap. Nothing to understand...just a bunch or terminology to remember. Awful stuff.