Lesson 2: What You Need to Succeed

  I want the best grade with minimal effort, what do I need to do that?

 

A Supply List for Students Who Care

 

Brought to you by: A BioChem Student

 

So what do you need to succeed in Biochem? Well everyone is different but there are a few things that anyone will need to do well in this class.

•  TIME – if you don’t have time to dedicate to this class then you will not do well, you need to be able to put aside at least a couple hours a day aside to go over notes and even more then that the closer you get to the test. If you are okay with a C in the class then you can probably manage with having less time available to you, but if you want that A then I suggest not taking more than 2 other (300 or 400 level) classes on top of this class (3 if they are easy 200 level classes).   



http://www.charlottesmartypants.com/wp-content/uploads/busy-calendar-help-orig2.jpg

• GO TO CLASS – I cannot stress this enough, if you are a person who never goes to class and tries to scrape by through studying the text book THIS WILL NOT WORK FOR THIS CLASS. Why? because there is a lot of material (as mentioned in Lesson 1) and the book will give you a good chunk of it with no hints as to what is important and not. BY GOING TO CLASS YOU CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO THE TEACHER! You don’t have to take notes if you don’t want to, but just recording or noting KEYWORDS that the teacher says or emphasizes for you to look up and learn on your own latter will ensure that you are truly prepared for the tests.

• TEACHER’S INFO – Know when your teachers office hours are and what their e-mail is, I promise you that at least once in your time in this class you will need them so make a note of them on the front of your notebook so you know where they are fast if you ever need them.

http://pete.com/view/college-professor

• BOOK – there are a number of good Biochemistry book and a number of BAD biochemistry books out there. In most cases your teacher has likely assigned you a text book to use. In my personal opinion the best Biochem book I have ever had or used was Lippincott’s Biochemistry, I have the 4^th edition and it is relatively cheep (as far as text books go) if you order it on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Biochemistry-Lippincotts-Illustrated-Reviews-Series/dp/160831412X

 Or you could of course go for something a little less conventional,

 though i don't know how well that would help you! =)

• ONLINE RESOURCES – Some of your teachers will set up online pages for the course, these are handy for review and if you did not understand something from lecture, I suggest going onto the site the first week of class to familiarize yourself with it and determine if it will be any help to you. http://www.genome.jp/kegg/ is also a good resource but it can get over whelming very easily, If you do use this use it to form your OWN pathway maps! Having your own that you can follow will do you more good then the complicated ones on the website or book.

• BIG PIECES OF SKETCH PAPER – why the heck would I need this? Well! The thing is, the mechanisms you will learn are LONG and COMPLICATED and ANNOYING (for the most part) so you can have lots of normal sized paper with different portions of the pathways in very small handwriting OR you can have these big pieces of paper with the mechanism in full on them with lots of nice big writing on them so you can actually understand them. It’s up to you but I would go with the big paper any day.

 A DRY ERASE BOARD - This will allow you to draw pathways over and over and over until your eye bleed and they are etched into you heard never to leave again. It is actually one of the best ways to study for this class (as i have found) since if forces you to draw the structures again and again along with  the enzyme names and co-factors. Repetition is key after all!!

 A mirror also works for this =) 

(note image is not mine, in fact none of the images are)

http://bertoldofamily.blogspot.com/2009_08_23_archive.html

Things that you don't really need but but that might be handy anyway

•  Recorder or a recording app – these are handy because they let you go back through the lecture and make sure you didn’t miss anything (biochem teachers go FAST not because they want to but because there is so much material that they have to)
• Colored markers or pencils – if you’re someone that color helps you remember things then having a special color for all the molecules, the branch-chain that is changing, co-factors, and enzymes might help you do better on the tests.
• A study group – These can help you a lot but be warned that they can also hinder you. Make sure you make time for you to study alone and only meet up with a group to study after you think you have a good grasp of the concepts. Groups can help solidify these concepts but when the group is fighting over how a mechanism works it will only lead to confusion and worse grades for everyone. 

Next Lessons: Questions to Study By and Intro to Glycolysis and Gluconeogenisis, what you really need to know.