Eduventure: The AR Edition - School Chat

A thread for educhation discussion.

My genetics assignments are finally done! It was reasonably bullshit that the two assignments, for two different papers, were due on the same day - nice going, Genetics department - but at least I didn't have a genetics lab on the afternoon before it was due like some other apparent poor sods.

GENE223 (Developmental and Applied Genetics) was a "lab report", which is like a lab report (the kind I'm required to do for zoology) except it's a half-arsed edition that can't figure out what tense you're supposed to be writing it in and gives less practice for writing a real submission to a real scholarly journal and is less clear about how exactly you're supposed to format the jerky-dry piece of shit. Not to mention the experiment itself gets a solid out of for being properly structured so results were actually comprehensible and actually accurate enough to use as the basis for a credible report. Unlike GENE222, they don't borrow a small squadron of zoology lecturers who likely tell them how much more progressive their department is in teaching us how to do things like the big kids do.

I shouldn't really bitch about it, but when I spend time trying to fit a "big kids'" report - as taught by my Zoology courses - into the format the Genetics department is apparently grading on, and I friggin' suffer for it, yes I'm gonna bitch about it. GENE223's course content doesn't really light my metaphorical effigy in comparison to GENE222 either. (Additionally: Fuck the nomenclature for papers. It gets friggin' confusing when I've got shit due for different papers.)

Then again, GENE222 (Genes, Chromosomes, and Populations) is all about evolution and genetics and the kinky stuff they get up to in the ol' biosphere. It's pretty much exactly what I came to university, which is awesome except it makes me so much more belligerent about everything else I'm learning. Which, luckily, is less than last semester (fewer papers, not fewer brain cells running, but yeah).

Let me put it this way: In Soviet Russia, YOU do IB! :3

Genetics, why do you gotta be all fuckin' with my sleep schedule.

On the bright side, I got a respectable 70% on my first lab assignment, and attended Lab 2/2 for our zebrafish module (I strategically bailed on the first because of the Resnowening of much of Dunedin, and leave me alone my flat was nice and warm) today. Despite not being allowed to take any baby zebrafish home (although I probably could've snuck out a pipette full of the little buggers), we got a great demonstration of what teratogens do to baby fish. More usefully for me, I got a great demonstration of that thing I was supposed to write about but didn't know what, exactly, we did. I additionally lost the crapshoot which was trying to pick the same teratogen that my group was doing, but seeing as there's only this proposal to hand in (and no lab report) it doesn't matter too much anyway, provided I did the research for something.

Which I did! And the snow netted me an extension for the proposal anyway, which gives me a relaxed morning to check over that shit and remember to be especially anal retentive when I see how I've formatted my references.

Now there's just an oft-postponed Zoology report I have to write, and I'm cruising until mid-semester break.

I just want to say: I've finished all my assessment for the IB!! ^____^

Which means that mocks are in a week. Pu. ;-;
But still! No more papers, no more essays, no more internal assessments (God DAMN you IAs), just revision revision revision. I'll prolly put up some revision stuff in the sake of educating 1) in stuff and 2) in reading my penmanship ><

First day of school of as a senior!
And RAIN prevented me from being able to get home in a timely fashion.
DAMN YOU WEATHER!!!

Overall it was pretty chill and i've already recognized what parts are going to be "issues" and I just hope that I can do well and also wrap up all of the stupid college things I need to do.

Postin' in forums in my sympatric speciation lecture. Worst student but seriously this one slide's so text-heavy it a)puts Grand Battles to shame and b)I'd absorb it better if I read it without some guy waffling over it.

Rgggh.
The biology class I want to take is full so my options are to either take the introductory course and go over a bunch of material I already know or take some other course and have my biology knowledge deteriorate thanks to going through summer and a semester of college without focusing on it.
::\

So tonight (technically today!) is a magical moment. The first of september.
I'm not going to school, because our colleges are awesome and have three-month breaks. My little brother is going to school, and I am having the best of times making fun of him for it. Still though, it kind of has to sink in. Right now it still feels like tomorrow's the big important school day.

So yeah! Going to college! All you cool mature people already go to college, so if you have any advice for Newhearst "Newsworth" Mcnewest McGee, I would love to hear it. How do you guys tackle studying? Schedules? Cramming at the last month? Does overview help as much as they say it does? first lesson, attend Y/N? A lot of people tell me you can totally skip the first one seeing as it's only stuff like "Introduction" and "What is chemistry?" Thankfully I don't have a dorm, seeing as our campus is like 20 minutes' bus drive from my house. Dorms would just fuck this up even more.

Feel free to share hilarious/important/amazing universituations.

Oh man I am not seeing nearly enough freshmenanigans in this thread!

I am pretty much running on right now in an attempt to get this essay done on time. I'm gonna hate myself for it but eh after this not many other assignments to think about for a while. As usual, the ~5 hours before deadline are the most productive. It's almost fun in a lunatic "oh god the fuck am I rambling about" kind of way.

Also people-spotting while I'm at it. A horde of freshers stormed out the lecture theatre I'm chilling outside; it was probably a Health Sci paper. Ah, the memories.

(Pines if you remember your Otago Campus layout it was the St David's building, that nice shiny sorta one with its arse stapled to the older and slightler mankier science library.)

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Spoiler/me is finishing Year 12 (senior year in the American-system layout)

...and hating it. Somehoww...I hadn't expected mocks to be this hard. If this is how the actual IB exams work out, then yes. The IB is as bad as it looks. *cry*

Welp, I can now proudly say I know how the fuck χ² works. At, like, 2 friggin' am, no less. New personal best? Maybe?

I had a chemistry test today! Highlights included possibly the worst labeled diagram of a mass spectrometer, a questionable understanding of nuclear reactions, and doing everything in pen because of a dearth of pencils.

Also after around three weeks of college things have sort of normalized, which is nice. I don't have to input that much effort into chemistry (at least, so far) or Spanish, though math and English are still unmitigated suffering. Also I sort of miss biology-- there are two biology courses at the 100 level, and one I already qualify for as completed and the other was full at registration and conflicted with my schedule when others dropped out-- but that's been a persistent complaint of mine and I'll have a chance second semester to get in.

So school sucks less maybe? I dunno.

Mocks have finished! Then was followed by two straight days of feedback, all of which was unilaterally bad. Holidays are going to =/= holidays...

Today I walked past the auditorium and saw the Greased Lightning prop from the production of Grease I was in.

Nostalgia fucking sucks, you guys.

Aaaaaaaugh three exams in one week (5th, 7th, and 10th), I could give all you genetics fetishists summaries of my course material as I go over it if you wanted? I'm probably gonna use what I just said as a chance to procrastinate, anyway

Here we fucking go oh and may as well start this on a decent note: Quantitative Genetics (aka Statistics in a Genetics outfit) awaaaaay:

So. As I think I concluded having hissy fit about a few weeks back, the majority of phenotypes (observable traits) are not dictated by single-gene loci. They may either be the result of a "cocktail" of genes which contribute, or the environment or "developmental noise" may play a degree in traits such as height or weight. The trouble with determining this kind of shit for humans is that eliminating either the environment or genetic variation is necessary to figure out to what degree each will contribute for any given trait.

Case in point: Language. It's erroneous to say that there's no genetic basis for language (developmental genetics contributes to correct formation of the cerebral and laryngeal structures necessary to produce any language, and by some statements the language you speak could be mistaken as having a genetic basis (because your parents speak it, so it's "passed down".)), because it's obviously dictated by environment. This whole thing humans have with looking after their offspring through the course of their development makes quantifying genotype as a contributor to phenotype really. Friggin'. Difficult. Either way, language spoken is an example of a familial trait, that isn't otherwise heritable.

This whole thing about either removing the "genetic variation" factor or the "environment as a contributor" factor (because any good scientific experiment changes only one variable at a time, then measures the other!) is why twin studies are a biggie. Sadly, there are a lot fewer twins than people who aren't, so we're still only looking at scattered data points from which we could extrapolate how different environments act upon the development of a particular phenotype.

One way to test for the "heritability" (a.k.a the genetic basis of any given phenotype) is to use (lemme go look it up) marker-gene segregation. This is where you pick a "marker gene" which usually has no obvious relation to the phenotype in question. If the inheritance patterns of the "marker gene" have any correlation with the phenotype, then that raises the possibility that there is a genetic basis for the phenotype of interest. (One example of a marker gene might be the one which crops up as the ABO blood groups in humans.) Another way (not so good for humans) is to pick a trait (let's say, seed weight) and self-cross individuals with the maximum and minimum seed weights in a population, then raise the offspring in an identical environment. If the two extremes produce offspring with different sizes in the same environment, that's good evidence for a healthy genetic contribution to the phenotype. If the two groups of offspring show a similar (often middle-of-the-road, mean/mode/average value) when raised in the same environment, the genetic basis is diminished.


The other issue with all this shit is that the same genotype may produce different, non-linear results in different environments. The degree to which this can occur is called the "norm of reaction." This means that any given genotype may well display a range of phenotypes given a range in environment. (Which is kind of a given, it's like leashing a goat with one length of rope tied to one post, then trying to predict where it'll be in an hour's time. That kind of thing gets easier to estimate if you leashed it to more bits of rope (eliminated more variables).

Finally catchin' up with all the calculus I missed, woooo

Have to write college applications, less woooo

I am sitting here in an orange juice benderfunk feeling megasorry for myself


I am not prepared for tomorrow's exam

That's a sad thing to read before I head off for the night.

Hope you feel better and it goes well.

Holy balls we actually have old threads we can properly necrobump now. Sweet.

Anyway, got my student loan applications done, and am pretty much set to transfer to Lincoln. Now I can get my presentation powerpoint done in a mad rush tomorrow, then academia-wise keep enjoying myself in the research centre until it's time for scholarship applications.

Wheeeeeee

I don't have much to add to this thread besides anecdotes of some of the horridly stupid people i attend school with, BUT BOY ARE THEY GOLD.

For instance, the other day the teacher was explaining to this girl that sat behind me the reason why everything the president knows isn't public knowledge, (which had to be explained to this poor person apparently) and when she mentioned "Like the number of atomic bombs america has, the public doesnt need to know that", the girl looked up at her and said verbatim "America has atomic bombs? Like in GI Joe?". I felt really bad for the teacher.

I've got two streams in my maths class that are completely full, and the course coordinators haven't gotten back to me! And uni starts in about two weeks! Yay!

I got a 91 out of 100 on a chemistry exam when the class average was 65-ish
I'm allowed to feel good about that right

Goddamn flying arse-backwards through the first day of classes

Luckily I might just be able to talk to people and skip a bunch of pre-requisites? The piecemeal thought-postings are because I'm in a class now - luckily I'm already on speaking terms with half of the lecturers for this course thanks to the work earlier this semester, and this who university is so amazingly chillaxed.

Preeeetty sure transferring was the best decision I ever made, academically speaking.

First day back in class after a lengthy one week holiday! Yippee. We have been given a one week (except due before class on thursday so not really) assignment 'as a warm up'. It's pretty similar to the one we had to fill in time before the holiday; a one week assignment in which we had to make a t shirt which turned into an organizational cluster fuck because we also had to work in groups.

This time we have to make three t shirt designs from scratch. In 72 hours.

Somebody please remind me why i want to be a designer

edit: I would also like to say that i hate stylesheets forever.

Because I can't and have to be an engineer

I think I'm in over my head for math

never covered complex thingies before D: