Cell Biology is mostly a mandatory course for a lot of students in Biology and Biochemistry. It really depends on what type of a person you are in your learning style and the way you like to take tests. Some say its boring while others think it is easy and interesting. For me, I'm the interested...

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I'm taking this course this summer with Dr. Dej, can you keep up with her lecturing if you handwrite your notes, or is it better to take notes on your laptop?

Thanks in advance!

Originally Posted by DLoukov

I'm taking this course this summer with Dr. Dej, can you keep up with her lecturing if you handwrite your notes, or is it better to take notes on your laptop?

Thanks in advance!

I took Genetics with her, I took notes with my laptop but they were so short that I could have easily written them by hand. I only write information supplementary to the information given on the slides.

Originally Posted by DLoukov

I'm taking this course this summer with Dr. Dej, can you keep up with her lecturing if you handwrite your notes, or is it better to take notes on your laptop?

Thanks in advance!

pretty much everything that she says is on the notes. I hand wrote some extra things on her lecture notes

Any tips for doing well in the course, besides the regular note-taking and reviewing and such? Also, is it possible to get a 10+ in the course?
Thanks!

It's definitely possible to get 10+, especially if you have a good memory. Although, my general rule of thumb is that there is not a single course that it is impossible to get a 12 in. It's the combination of courses you're taking at one time, the amount of time and effort you put into it, as well as your general intelligence/ability to deal with that type of material. So, you will never ever hear me say that a 10+ is not possible. That definitely doesn't mean all of my marks have been 10+. I have had profs ask me why certain courses were so hard, why people's marks were so much lower in it than all the others, what is it about the course that makes it so difficult? But even those courses are 12-able, and there will always be at least one person who gets a 12 in every course you're in.

Study tips...draw out all of the pathways on a whiteboard, and make sure you know everything that's happening! My housemate & I did this the night before the exam for the cell cycle stuff and another section, but not for the cancer stuff, and we knew the stuff we'd drawn out sooooo much better than the cancer stuff because we'd forced ourselves to go through it and actually say what every little molecule does/what its role is. These sorts of random details were ~90% of our exam, so definitely make sure you know them. IIRC, we had about 5 questions asking what ras does. For example:

Q: "What type of protein is ras?"
A: GTP-ase

Q: "What would ras do in x pathway?"
A: transfer a GTP molecule

Q: "What type of molecule does ras interact with?"
A: GTP

Q: "What family does Arf belong to?"
A: ras superfamily

Q: "What does Arf do in x pathway?"
A: transfer a GTP molecule

See the repetitive-ness?! Meanwhile, the prof barely mentioned ras (since he was pretty scatterbrained, imho) but apparently ras is really important, so we got a ton of questions on it.

Originally Posted by ~*Sara*~

Any tips for doing well in the course, besides the regular note-taking and reviewing and such? Also, is it possible to get a 10+ in the course?
Thanks!

memorize...details... all of them

Oue exam was 90 mc of knowledge question...win

Awesome advice! Thanks a lot guys

so moral of the story... DO I BUY THE TXTBOOK?! i have dr . in...somthing or other

dr igdoura? he kept telling us to do the readings and whatnot, but they're not really necessary. I rarely ever use the textbook to study--I shared this one with my housemate, and the night before the exam when I decided to open it for the first time, found that it explained things MUCH better than he did. Textbook + very productive whiteboard studying with housemate = exam success!
It's the only time I've ever found textbook studying more productive than listening to lectures...
Other people thought he explained things quite well, though. If you can follow along with what he's saying, and/or have a friend you can borrow the book from (or the library!) you should be okay without buying it.

iggy was a decent teacher, but most importantly a real character and a pleasure to listen too
he implemented some unorthodox tutorial and tutorial tests, but in retrospect they were stupidly easy to do well in

memorable iggy quotes
"you gotta knoww"
"it takes two to tango"
"gotta stay on the ball"
he also picks on the kids with macs because you made a bad investment

The course started off really well, and then went downhill.

At first, the material being taught seemed relevant, and not too difficult.

The first midterm went well, it was fairly short, easy, and no big deal.

Then week 7 onwards, the material became more difficult to the point where it barely seems like English, it's just random pathways:

Ex., Ras --> Raf --> MEK --> MAP K --> p90etc etc

You have to know that, but you don't know what Ras and Raf and MEK stand for / mean / what they really are, so it's like you're memorizing random combinations of letters compared to actually knowing pathways.

The course isn't the worst, but I've taken far better courses at Mac.

Does anyone have the reading list for this course?

Originally Posted by Purple2309

Does anyone have the reading list for this course?

http://www.biology.mcmaster. ca/ugrad_cours.htm

I had a good experience and thus good mark with this course. Dr. Dej is a great teacher and she brings enthusiasm and quirkiness to all her lectures. Her lecture notes are very easy to follow and contain most of her notes but I really recommend you still try to go to most of her classes. I went to most of the lectures even though they were at 9:30 three times a week! I just found the material and the way she taught it to be so interesting. She really connects all the topics she teaches to the previous chapters before. It showed me how interconnected every protein shape and function is to another protein shape and function.
Her tests are so so fair and you will find yourself surprisingly liking cell biology a whole lot more than you expected. I know it was a shock to me that I was enjnoying this so much more.\
But be warned, this course does require a lot of work and studying to go into it. There is a lot of memorizing required. All in all though, I found that the more I learned and remembered about one topic in the course, the more easily I was able to learn the next topic that was taught. It's a greatly put together course and I hope you get Dr. Dej. It was the combination of the material in cell biology and Dr. Dej teaching it that made me really enjoy it.

Hi,

I also took this course with Dr. Dej in the Winter 2011 term.

I was really happy with this course. Although there was quite a bit of information to memorize, as long as you kept up with the class and reviewed your notes regularly, it was not that difficult of a course. This course is definitely 10+able if you put the work into it.

Also, don't buy the textbook for this course. It is not worth it. Just make really good notes in class and you should be good for the midterms and exams. Make sure that you start studying for midterms and exams several days in advance (4-5 days worked best for me), or you may mix up information or pathways on the day of the test.