Hey I'm in the Biochem Biomed specialization program and going into my third year, but I can give you a quick rundown of biochem in general. So, second year is the same for all biochem students (core and specializations), meaning you guys all take the same courses. 2L06 is probably your most time-consuming course, cuz you have labs every week. The labs themselves aren't worth a whole lot (basically 1% or less at the end of the year), but group projects and your final lab report is what really matters. Although it is time consuming, the lab course really helps with the stuff that you learn in biochem 2b03 and 2bb3. Like you actually get to use the techniques that you learned from those classes and apply them in a research project. It is definitely useful if you plan to go into research.
As for writing a thesis, I'm pretty sure it doesnt matter whether your in a specializtion or not, but everyone has to do one in 4th year. But there are 4 different courses you can choose, a 3 unit, 6 unit, 9 unit and 12 unit. So i guess depending on how much you really wanna do a thesis, you can choose whichever course you want. I think the catch is, the less unit thesis course you take, the more upper year biochem, bio, chem and chem bio courses you have to take. I think the requirement says, 12 units of level 3 and 4 courses out of one course must be, and then lists the thesis courses. So in the end, it's what you wanna do.
The program is kinda split between concepts and research. 2L06 will definitely teach you how to do proper research for papers, projects and lab reports. Other courses like biochem, orgo, cell bio and genetics are mostly conceptual based.
Hope that helps
