This course wasn't as bad as some make it out to be. There were two lectures every week and a lab every other week so course work was minimal. Lectures were generally okay, the prof would just talk and show slide pictures and as long as you took down stuff that seemed important you'd be fine. The...

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heavy on memorization. Textbook is a must. Prof is bad.

What was the testing style for each midterm, and for the exam? Was it pretty much half MC, half short answers?

Originally Posted by Angoose

What was the testing style for each midterm, and for the exam? Was it pretty much half MC, half short answers?

Last year the first midterm have mc and t/f and if u get questions wrong in t/f, the prof take away marks. Because he doesn't want people who is guessing to get the mark.
For second midterm, it include mc, t/f , and short answer.

Oh my goodness. That sounds like a pain :'(.

Originally Posted by Angoose

Oh my goodness. That sounds like a pain :'(.

If you have to take this course, I have some materials that might help you out a little bit.

I wouldn't recommend this class unless you need it. The material was very interesting but the course itself was noooot fun. I know many people who dropped it after the first midterm. Dr. Xu is an extremely smart man but I seriously had a hard time understanding him and I pretty much just taught myself the material but this is the case with a lot of classes for me. I completely understand why he has the negative marking thing in place for T/F because honestly you can guess and have a 50% of getting it right but I do not agree with the fact that half the first midterm was T/F that was too much to have the negative marking in place. Also he didn't tell us beforehand so we literally found out minutes before writing the midterm, this caused a huge uproar people were pretty upset about it but it didn't bother me that much. The second midterm included short answer. Out of all the short answer questions I only got perfect on one of them and this was because i had literally memorized every single little thing about that mechanism but it was hard for me to memorize EVERYTHING to that extent. I remember the last written answer question was sooo vague I thought it was one of those apply your knowledge there's no wrong answer type thing...it wasn't. I later found the answer in the notes but the way the question was worded I didn't make the connection but great for those people who did ! No one I knew did. The exam was bruuuuuutal. I think he probably bellcurved it because I came out of the exam with the same mark I went in with, which was a miracle. There was so much material to know for that exam, probably the most material I've had to know for an exam thus far. And you had to know everything in such detail. But overall I learned A LOT from this class because it was all pretty much new stuff. It's not an easy class so if you're crazy about marks I wouldn't take it!

Oh right I forgot about the labs. The labs were similar to the first year bio labs. I only found the first lab to be slightly long. One good thing about the labs was that the questions you had to answer afterwards didn't really matter on your results which was good because we always messed up haha. My TA hardly spoke english, she was really nice but there was a huge language barrier and she couldn't answer simple questions like: do we have to heat the plate before plating the bacteria.... We had a formal lab and I don't know if it was just my TA but I was given my lab back with absolutely no comments or anything on it, no marking scheme, just a mark so I had no idea where I went wrong or how to improve. I believe that no matter what the class is you can't just put down a mark and no explain why the student got that mark...but unfortunately that's the case sometimes

I kind of need to take this course, and now I'm totally dreading it. I've always heard that orgo 1 and 2 were the most annoying courses for science students, and I managed to survive them....kind of . I guess if I put the time in, I'll see how everything goes. Did you ever skip any of his 3 hr lectures? From everything I've heard about the course, his lecture notes are extremely vague...so will I be okay if I just read the text if I miss a class or two? I don't really like night classes, but it seems like this is the only time microbio is ever offered.
The final exam was like...140 MC questions, with everything being cumulative? My GPA isn't that great anymore after second year, so I guess I'm ready for anything .

Originally Posted by lt93

I wouldn't recommend this class unless you need it. The material was very interesting but the course itself was noooot fun. I know many people who dropped it after the first midterm. Dr. Xu is an extremely smart man but I seriously had a hard time understanding him and I pretty much just taught myself the material but this is the case with a lot of classes for me. I completely understand why he has the negative marking thing in place for T/F because honestly you can guess and have a 50% of getting it right but I do not agree with the fact that half the first midterm was T/F that was too much to have the negative marking in place. Also he didn't tell us beforehand so we literally found out minutes before writing the midterm, this caused a huge uproar people were pretty upset about it but it didn't bother me that much. The second midterm included short answer. Out of all the short answer questions I only got perfect on one of them and this was because i had literally memorized every single little thing about that mechanism but it was hard for me to memorize EVERYTHING to that extent. I remember the last written answer question was sooo vague I thought it was one of those apply your knowledge there's no wrong answer type thing...it wasn't. I later found the answer in the notes but the way the question was worded I didn't make the connection but great for those people who did ! No one I knew did. The exam was bruuuuuutal. I think he probably bellcurved it because I came out of the exam with the same mark I went in with, which was a miracle. There was so much material to know for that exam, probably the most material I've had to know for an exam thus far. And you had to know everything in such detail. But overall I learned A LOT from this class because it was all pretty much new stuff. It's not an easy class so if you're crazy about marks I wouldn't take it!

Originally Posted by Angoose

I kind of need to take this course, and now I'm totally dreading it. I've always heard that orgo 1 and 2 were the most annoying courses for science students, and I managed to survive them....kind of . I guess if I put the time in, I'll see how everything goes. Did you ever skip any of his 3 hr lectures? From everything I've heard about the course, his lecture notes are extremely vague...so will I be okay if I just read the text if I miss a class or two? I don't really like night classes, but it seems like this is the only time microbio is ever offered.
The final exam was like...140 MC questions, with everything being cumulative? My GPA isn't that great anymore after second year, so I guess I'm ready for anything .

Personally I regret skipping the lectures... I skipped 3 near the end, and it was so hard to determine what to read in the textbook. Even if you don't learn in his class, at least you get a better idea about what to focus on.. there's too much in the textbook and I ended up reading unnecessary details and trying to memorize them.

So overall, this was a tough course that if you dont need to take, you shouldnt take it?
and do you need a textbook for this course?

Originally Posted by tsaomk

So overall, this was a tough course that if you dont need to take, you shouldnt take it?
and do you need a textbook for this course?

The textbook is an absolute necessity. You MUST read it. But since the amount of material covered in this course seems overwhelming, I tended to mindlessly read the textbook just to get through everything fast. You must think about what you're reading if you want to do well in this course. Memorizing becomes so much easier that way. Too bad I only learned this before the final... but better late than never because realizing this helped me do much better than what I would have done otherwise.

In addition, if Dr. Xu gives you advice about anything, do take it seriously. He will say review the material before and after class. Do that, and do well!

The nature of this course's difficulty definitely warrants me writing a brief statement of warning: the midterms and exam REQUIRE that you memorize (and partially understand, but mostly flat out memorize) every single f*cking detail in this textbook in relation to what material he covers in class-which is a lot. Which is why on the exam if you don't remember one tiny piece of information about something, you will not have any possible way of reasoning through certain types of questions, especially the true and false stuff. I put MANY hours of studying into this course and did great, but all I can say to those taking it is good f*cking luck.

The worst course I have ever taken. To do well, you must memorize every figure, number, or fact quoted in either the textbook or in lecture. Expect to be asked unreasonable questions. For the short answer portions, you might expect to receive at least some marks for knowing the general concepts, but no, in fact you must know all the specific gene names and protein products. Do not take this course unless you have no other option.

Has anyone ever had Finan as a prof for this course (or any other courses)? I thought Xu was the only one who taught microbio, but the master timetable says otherwise :O.