Undergraduate work complete! and Now what?

Alright, I took my Psy Research Final today. Piece o'cake! We got our paper back as well, and the way I figure the resubmitted homeworks are going to turn out, as well as other miscellaneous points, I figure that I could have gotten a 42/75 on the final and still passed. And I'm confident of about 70 of those 75 questions. That means I didn't even need the extra credit to get an A in the class. Pretty cool.

And that's it. That's the end of my undergraduate responsibilities, besides submitting my grade from the 1 unit class I took at my community college. (Minor, but important. No degree without submitting that to SFSU. It was part of my graduation plan that I had signed off on to get the semester started.) It's not a great accomplishment. In fact it's a bit of an embarrassment, but it's done. A part of the shame I carry with me can be put aside now.

Resuming study for the PCAT is part of the So now what? I haven't done any studying. I checked the exam dates Friday night, and there are four dates to take it before next round of applications:

June 19, 2010 (Register by May 7th)

August 21, 2010 (Register by July 9th)

October 16, 2010 (Register by Sept. 3rd)

January 22, 2011 (Register by Dec. 10th)

June 19th is definitely too soon, and I'd rather have January 22nd as an option if I don't like my results. If possible, I'd like to take the exam at the August 21st date. That'll be during the first week of the Fall semester, so there won't be any other exams that I'll have to be considering.

I've already begun studying since yesterday. I'll just have to evaluate my progress as the July 9th registration date approaches. Just as important, I need to seriously research out of state schools, because I'll need to be able to say which schools I want my results sent to when I register, I believe.

More info can be found directly at the official PCAT website, including a .pdf of the PCAT Candidate Information Booklet.

Saturday, May 22nd is the graduation ceremony for SFSU. Will I be going? Nope! I'll be going to the UCSF Pharmacy Information Day instead. I went to the Preview Day back in October, and now will be the full day experience. Here's the agenda straight from the confirmation email:

Program Agenda:

- Welcome

- Career Opportunities in Pharmacy (Pharmacist Panel)

- School of Pharmacy Pharm.D. Curriculum

- Why Pharmacy? (Pharmacy Student Panel)

- Lunch with Current Pharmacy Students

- Financial Aid & Campus Tours

- UCSF School of Pharmacy Admissions Process

- Preparing a Competitive Application

- Evaluation and Questions

It cost $25 to register, and that comes with food and parking. Awesome. Parking tickets have not been my friend in the past.

I like that this event happens so soon after finals. It's easier working with momentum. That's one of the reasons why I began studying again for the PCAT yesterday (and am continuing today) before finals was even over. I'll be sure to read over my posts from the Preview Day, and see what I can take away from their day long presentation.

Psy Research - Paper, Poster, Presentation, and Final

Let's do a wrap-up of Intro to Psy Research. Grading is based on weekly homeworks, quizzes, a group research project which consists of a paper, poster, and if chosen, a presentation, and the final (and attendance).

- Attendance and Quizzes

I only had one unexcused absence this semester. That is a vast improvement on my attendance from the bad days, and better even than last year. I'm proud of that. Especially since my classes began at 8am. I have had a terrible record when it comes to attendance for 8am classes, and that's now a thing of the past. My one missed class did happen to fall upon the day we had our first pop quiz, but we get to drop one, so it wasn't too bad.

- Paper

There's not much to say besides it being excellent. We had to turn it in at various stages, and our group paper received a 44/45 the first time, then a 72/75 the second time. We strove for perfects, but never expected it. We were there to learn after all and didn't know everything before taking the class. The final paper was submitted on Friday, and I expect to get a comparable score.

- Poster

As a group we put together a poster summarizing our project, and as a class, we had a poster conference where we'd present our posters to each other and we gave each other scores on originality, methods, and poster presentation. When it comes to crafts, I always insist on a clean look, using a knife/razor to cut paper rather than scissors, and I insisted on keeping everything the same, large font for easy reading. And of course we worked to make sure the content was as good as it could be as well. And at the end of the day, it all paid off, because we got chosen as one of the Top 5 groups to make a presentation of our full study to the whole class for extra credit points.  (10-30 points possible. To keep that in perspective, the Final is 75 points, Quizzes were 20 points each totaling 100 points, and homeworks were 15 points each totaling 150 points.  30 points is a lot!)

- Presentation

I feel that our presentation was definitely the best of the 5 presentations. We had a nice flow, used actual slides rather than a shrunken down version of our poster, we had a study that was basic but well thought out, and we covered everything from what led to the development of the study to limitations and strengths. We took second place.

The group that won got to present on the second day, thereby having an advantage of seeing what the other people did, which is just how it was, but the unsatisfying part was that the winning group relied more on gimmicks and performance to get the class to rank them high, rather than actually presenting a study. But I couldn't completely fault the class, it was our TA that really taught us what a presentation was supposed to be like and how to think of them critically, while the teacher didn't even break down the scoring into three categories like she did on the poster grading sheets.

All in all though, the whole project was a great experience, and working in groups, creating a poster, and presenting in front of a class are all different experiences that I will be able to learn from and take with me going into pharmacy school.

- Homework and Final

So I've been doing excellent in attendance, quizzes, and everything related to the group project. Add that on top of the fact that we get to resubmit all our homeworks on the day of the final to be regraded for 80% of our missing points... well... my homework grade isn't as good as it could be. Adding on top of that, that I now have 25 points of extra credit... well... I can say that I've been tempted to be lazy and go into the final overconfident again. It can be seen as gaming the system, or as just knowing where to prioritize right. I'm getting an A regardless, and just as important, I knew I was learning the material.

Except I've been able to resist that this time.  I do think that I don't need that much review, but I'll make sure that I do review the material. And I have already fixed two of the three homeworks that will get me a decent amount of points back. Getting an A should be no problem. Anything less than that would be shocking.

Genetics Final

I am behind on updates. Been focusing on finals even though there's been a lot going on. Time to start correcting that.

Alright. Let's first talk Finals prep. I wanted to begin studying the Saturday before the final (scheduled for Friday), but then I received an email from my Psy Research teacher that our group project got selected as one of the Top 5 projects of the class, and would be presenting for extra credit that Monday. (More on that tomorrow.) So there went my weekend. I didn't want to let my group down, and well... I wanted to win.

So that left me Monday through Thursday to study, keeping in mind that my final paper for Psy Research was also due Friday. We had two full chapters to cover (11 and 12), and then five partial chapters to study for (in order of assumed importance - 16, 17, 13, 14, 10). I divided the chapters up to cover Monday through Wednesday, and to just review on Thursday.

It didn't turn out that way. I didn't study Monday, but I still did get studying in the rest of the three days. I'd read a section of a chapter, digest the information, study the figures we needed to learn, and then took a break. I'd write down all the info from memory, and redraw the diagrams til I could regurgitate it just fine, then moved on to the next section.

It was a nice system, and with frequent breaks, it didn't feel like it took too much time out of my day. It's nice not cramming material the night before. My study habits aren't where they should be yet, but they're certainly improving. I didn't feel pressure when it came to studying for Genetics and meeting up with my group to work on our presentation and paper, but if I went into pharmacy school now I don't think it'd be good enough. (Another thing that I did was to delete Plants vs Zombies from my computer, which was sucking up a couple hours of time each day.)

Then came the actual final. The way I calculated it, I needed to get 104 points out of 100 points + 5 extra credit, to get an A. That would be highly unlikely. I had a 21 point cushion to get that A- and not drop down to a B+. As it is right now, I feel I should have gotten an A in the class, but an A- will be acceptable. I won't be happy, but I'll accept it. Getting a B- would be dissatisfying, and a B would be somewhat devastating.

From an Admissions standpoint (at least the one that I have in my head), this is my first science class since I switched to pharmacy, and I only had a 6 unit semester, so I should have gotten an A. On the other hand, since this is my first science class since I switched majors, maybe there's some leeway there. When I'm done, they'll see my progression and recovery since the "bad days" as long as I really do get all A's and some A-'s with the rest of my classes, maybe it's not so bad. And this isn't my last science class at SFSU anymore, like I thought in the beginning of the semester, since I'll be able to take Cell Bio and General BioChem this summer. (Although it's my last first attempt science class... sheesh... I think things through way too much.)

So I went in, and took the final, and it was pretty easy. All the answers came to me pretty quickly. I didn't answer what I assume is 1 point of the extra credit, and 2 points of the regular questions, so that guarantees no A in the class (unless the professor "curves" the scores, which I will not rely on), but that was unlikely in the first place.

But... while I felt I finished with a good 10 minutes left, and was just glancing over all my answers, as soon as I walked out the door, I realized I messed up a simple part of the first question! It was a 20 point question. I tried calculating it in my head, and originally thought I'd for sure get 12-14 points wrong. Adding that to the questions I didn't answer, that left me with 4 points left of my cushion left!! But after thinking more about it, I think it's more like 6-8 points marked off, which is a little bit better.

Realizing a mistake right when you leave an exam is not a fun experience. It's been constantly popping up in my mind these past three days. I do not want a B+. I do want to see my grade now, but I'll have to wait until June 2nd. We'll see how it goes then.

Genetics Take Home Exam - Quick Correction

Two things about the exam. It seemed to be a consensus that the Question 1 could have been worded better. That seemed to be the question most people were asking about before class was started as they compared answers.

The other thing is that it's good I double checked with someone else. I overlooked an important sentence that was part of Question 2a. I read the question as: Both John and Jane have siblings with sickle cell anemia but don't have it themselves.  What is the chance that their child will also have the disease. I overlooked the part of the question that said that no one else in the family had sickle cell anemia. That completely changed how the problem should be approached since the disease is autosomal recessive.

Genetics Take Home Exam

I've been working on my Take Home Exam (which will be averaged with my lowest exam score). For the most part, most of it is pretty easy... except for the very first question which is worth 15 points. I don't think we were taught how to indicate the chromosomal make-up of a cell that's gone through meiosis I. How do you show chromatids connected by a centromere if the original cell began with 1m1d2m2d3m3d?

And the question asks to state the possible chromosomal composition of daughter cells.  Does the=a? Because there isn't much space to write the answer, so it can't be to write down all the possible combinations due to crossover.  Well, there is no Psy Research tomorrow due to a furlough, so I'll have that hour free, and get some help from classmates. (Working on the exam with others is allowed. I wanted to work on it by myself at first because I wanted to really see if I knew the material.)

We'll see how it goes.

SFSU Genetics Exam 1 Results

Alright.  So I took my first real science exam for the first time in three semesters.  I've had my time away from the sciences, and been getting perspective from my time in psychology.  How did I do now that I'm dipping back in it?

Well, first gotta re-explain the way the exam turned out.  It was all short answers, and I wrote down answers for all the questions, but I didn't write out full explanations like I wanted.  I was constantly writing the entire time with one a few minutes to pause and think.

Then after we were done with the exam, we got an email from the teacher saying that many students were complaining that there wasn't enough time to take the exam.  She decided to drop the score from 100 to 80, and give an an additional quiz worth 20 points plus 5 extra credit.

So how did I do?  78 on the exam, 20 on the quiz, and 2 extra credit.  100/100!  That's both an exclamation both of woo! and aww!  

Woo! in terms of getting 100/100 of course.  I have an A.  An A+ actually.  That's a nice thing to see.  I aced the adjusted score that the teacher felt was fair.  And my final grade is what the admissions committees are going to see.

However... this isn't just about grades. I have to be in the mindset of performing well in pharmacy school, and not just about getting to pharmacy school.  I got 100/100 on paper. I got 100/125 in reality, and I could have done better. I was afraid I was going in overconfident to the exam, and I was.  Regardless of what the teacher ended up doing with the score, I know I could have done better. I know I could have studied harder.  I know that the preparation I did was not good enough for pharmacy school.

I'm not ready yet. That may be a little unfair, because on one hand, I only have 6 units, so it seems like I should have plenty of time to study. But on the other hand, I only have 6 units, so there's no urgency pushing me to study harder. That's something I'll have to test out when I retake some classes, and I try to overload my schedule. That'll be a better glimpse at how my performance might be in pharmacy school.

But until then, I can be satisfied with my score, and I can take it as a positive that I feel like I should have done better. That I was right that I was being overconfident, which should help me study better.  So we'll see how it goes next exam which comes on April 9th. Til then I have a psychology research group project, and a genetics research paper to work on.

First Genetics Exam and Research Pop Quiz 1

Well... I took my first exam of the semester.  I went in pretty confident, and somewhat worried that I was a bit overconfident.  It covered mitosis/meiosis, Mendilian genetics, and all the variations, mutations, sex-linked, and other issues that come along with it.  It seemed pretty straightforward.  The exam was mostly all short answer, and I answered everything, however I did not get to write out a full explanation for one of the problems.  But no one in the class left early, so in general that's a good sign.  I should be measuring my performance against myself, but using other metrics doesn't hurt.  Well... I'm looking forward to seeing my results!

On a similar note, I also had a pop quiz in Psy Research right before that.  20 question, multiple choice.  I feel as if I knew the answers to all but one of the questions, which was an educated guess, but I marked 9 of the 20 questions as B.  That makes me second guess myself.  I almost changed my answer to question 3 as I saw more and more B answers being marked.  However, since the teacher was putting up a slide of the questions one at a time, and I could no longer remember the specific wording of to two answers I was debating between, I decided to leave it how it was.  We'll see how I did most likely on Monday.