I'm a Science student going to Third Year

I've got four options at the moment and I need to Pick TWO:

KIN 3Y03 - Nutrition
BIOLOGY 3P03 - Cell Physiology
BIOLOGY 3I03 - Eukaryotic Genetics
BIOCHEM 3H03 - Clinical Biochemistry

Here's what I know so far:

KIN 3Y03 - Nutrition
- fairly good course, very similar to KIN 1F03, which is why Kin students do well in it
- easy assignments
- tricky/difficult exam
- night course

BIOLOGY 3P03 - Cell Physiology
- Dr. Nurse is a great prof, very nice to students
- content is okay, not too much but there's enough of it

BIOLOGY 3I03 - Eukaryotic Genetics
- this course is about yeast
- very boring content, night class
- about journal articles
- although boring, easy content and easy marks

BIOCHEM 3H03 - Clinical Biochemistry
- it's a biochem course
- I don't know anything else about it, to be honest its here because it sounded interesting

So, I need help choosing two of these courses, if anyone has taken any of these courses, their input would be awesome. If I have bad information it would be great to clear things up. I'm looking for easy courses content-wise, which puts Eukaryotic Genetics up there, I can get past the fact that the content is boring. I just want to make sure the course really is easy enough.

Even a simple ranking of which courses you would take and why would be great

Thanks

As a side note, does anyone know anything about the course EARTH SC 3DD3 - Marine Ecosystems?

In regards to Kin 3Y03:

-Actually, Kin 1F03 has only run twice so far (it's a fairly new Level I Kin course)...so no student has taken both, 1F03 and 3Y03 yet (except perhaps the odd minority who chose to fast-track).

In either case, this isn't why most students do well in it. It's a fairly easy course, haha.

-It was not a night course when I took it *shakes fist* Leave it to the registrar to make things inconvenient.

-The assignments were easy, but unbelievably annoying.
-The exam was tricky...you're right about that one. It's manageable though...make sure you attend lectures and take good notes however. The textbook alone is not enough (and you may be mislead into believing it is). It seemed to require a bit of 'common knowledge' to write...which was probably a bit unfair to those who have lived under a rock their whole lives, like myself.

-If Stu Phillips is teaching the course, then you're in for a treat. He should seriously be doing standup instead of teaching...his antics kept me attending lecture simply to see what amusing remarks he'd have that day.


Reason to take Kin 3Y03 - Purely for interest. Also, if you don't know much about Nutrition, this course will have you identifying the 'good fats' and reading nutrition labels on everything you eat/buy. I'm glad I took this course, because as corny as it sounds, I now make healthier choices.

Reason not to take Kin 3Y03 - If you lack interest, and have a minimal, but well-rounded knowledge of nutrition as it is. If you have no interest in the technical details...then you will leave the course with only a spotty at best appreciation for nutrition...which you can probably get from the media. (I know a few people who took the course and said 'wow, what a waste of time' because they pretty much knew everything about it already, save the technical details)

Take Bio 3p03.

The content is highly interesting, Dr. Nurse seems to like drugs a lot =p. It's only 2 lectures and a tutorial that you have to attend. As long as you study it's easy to do well.

I'm taking clinical next year. I heard it was interesting, but the tests can be tricky at times. I prefer interest over ease though.

I have taken Kin3y03 and Biochem3h03, so here's my input:

Kin3Y03 - If you're looking for the easiest one of the four, I haven't taken two but I almost guarantee this is the easiest... it's as close as a third year course comes to being a bird... the two assignments, worth 15 and 20% are pretty much free 100% (or close), so that's a third of the course... the 30% midterm is 30 MC questions... the questions are really basic, acually TOO basic, that I got a few wrong because I was looking for tricks (I need to stop doing that)... hmm, I'm trying to think back to the exam... I'm not sure what people are saying about it being tricky... when I think of 'tricky' I think of trick questions, and I don't think it was like that... it was just a fair bit of material, and I'm pretty sure the questions were a little more difficult than the midterm... but if you know it, you'll find it fine no problem

Phillips is probably the coolest prof I've had... he makes a lot of fart jokes and stuff like that... the one thing is, the custom courseware is like $150, and you need to know like a total of 5 pages from it (but you also need the CD for the 2nd project (which takes a while by the way... mine was 50 pages, but its mostly charts produced by the program)... although, I think you can do it in a computer lab if you didnt want to buy the courseware

oops, I forgot about biochem...

I thought that it was a really interesting class... don't take it if you're looking for an easy class, it's not too easy... i didn't find it too hard, but I can see that some people would... there was a LOT of material

first half was electrolytes, acid-base, kidney, liver... Hill's midterm (25%) involved some thinking, but if you know the material (although you need to be able to retain a fair bit of material) it was fine (ie. not really trick questions that screw you... some people probably didn't do that well just because he can ask about any small thing from the notes... however, he does some case study questions, and there are some obvious parts from the notes in which the questions focus)

second half was hormones... Macri was one of the most boring lecturers I've ever had (he'd go off talking about something useless for 20 mins, repeat a lot... I couldn't take notes, but it didn't matter)... his questions are really basic (ie. what is the hormone that does this, etc.)... again, a lot of material to know, purely memorization... but if you put in the time, you can pretty much condense it down to a few pages to memorize, and that's basically all you need to know

the midterm averages were 70% and 78%, and im guessing the exam was around 75%... as long as you know the material well (and are good at retaining), you'll do well... BUT, you said you were looking specifically for an easy course... then I guess this one isn't the best choice

Thanks a lot to everyone, Kin 3Y03 sounds really interesting now and is probably one that I'll be taking. Thanks to both gladmam and Mowicz. Clinical Biochem sounds really interesting, its just that I have other courses that I know to be heavy in load so I wanted to lighten the rest of my schedule. It may be a 4th year option for me.

I guess Eukaryotic Genetics isn't a very popular course, I'm still on the boat between that and Cell Physiology. Jesus, can you give me any information about the course content of 3P03?

Originally Posted by kumquat

I guess Eukaryotic Genetics isn't a very popular course, I'm still on the boat between that and Cell Physiology. Jesus, can you give me any information about the course content of 3P03?

There was a lot on nerves and membrane potentials in the first part of the course. Although, it's a lot of review from other courses, Dr. Nurse makes it interesting with and uses real world applications: i.e: If this cell were to exist, how would it function? would it explode? What if drug X were added?

It's a lot more about understanding the content rather than pure memorization which was nice. Although the pathways and drugs you definitely have to remember.

The second component of the course focused on cell signalling. So there's a bit of review on GPCRs, IP3, etc. pathways. Once again it was more understanding and lots of real world application. =p You figure out why people may have vision problems if they take viagra.

I thought it was really interesting. As long as you go to class, it's not too difficult.

The course sounds great and i'll definitely be going to class, I've got one last question though. Could you give me any examples of questions he would ask on tests? I was never a fan of short/long answer, but if the questions aren't asking for straight definitions and are more application like you said, I don't think I'd mind.

Originally Posted by kumquat

The course sounds great and i'll definitely be going to class, I've got one last question though. Could you give me any examples of questions he would ask on tests? I was never a fan of short/long answer, but if the questions aren't asking for straight definitions and are more application like you said, I don't think I'd mind.

Oh, the tests are all short/long answer.

There are true/false statements which can be tricky if you're not reading well enough.

There are a lot of calculation questions. So, he'll give you a chart with a list of ions and intra and extracellular concentrations. These are usually multipart: is the cell in equillibrium? What happens if you change the concentration of ion X? If, drug Y is added, it blocks a certain channel. How would this affect the membrane potential.

=p stuff like that. Hopefully it helps a bit. : ) I'm bad with definitions as I don't memorize, but this was pretty easy.