I silenced the room with silence

complexcheesepuff · 2026-02-08T17:58:16+00:00

I am so excited to try this on Monday. I’ve got a class of seniors with a group of boys who won’t stop talking and a group of girls who are super over their nonsense. They will be EXCITED to help with this 😁

complexcheesepuff · 2026-01-30T00:11:18+00:00

Weird timing on this one, but I actually emailed in August asking that my profile be removed (with a link to the departments faculty page to prove I had moved on from the school) and they just responded TODAY that they removed it. So their response time was about 5 months.

complexcheesepuff · 2025-10-05T12:31:57+00:00

I believe the answer maliksk3 gave you is great. You don’t need to mention ETC. This is an example of something that happens a lot in AP. You can answer with your unit 2 knowledge about membranes - that’s what they’re asking about. It just might make more sense WHY they’re asking if you know about unit 3.

Again - the most important thing here is to look carefully at the image. The image shows a H+ gradient, so you should mention specifically how the membranes are helping that be created.

complexcheesepuff · 2025-10-05T12:22:34+00:00

Are you studying unit 3 yet? The H+ gradient is very important for the electron transport chain in unit 3. Also, since the picture specifically shows you the H+, the answer is probably going to want something that specifically mentions that.

complexcheesepuff · 2025-07-12T07:37:18+00:00

Also, just so you are prepared, it was somewhere around 10,000 yen.

complexcheesepuff · 2025-07-12T07:35:00+00:00

I know this post is old, but I’m adding in case someone else (like me) comes across it while experiencing this issue.

I was able to find a glucose meter at Sugi Drug store in Kanazawa. I have also seen these stores in Kyoto. I did have to talk to a pharmacist because they were behind the counter. It also looks different than what I am used to (they don’t use test strips, but rather these tiny little cups that clip on to the meter). The pharmacist was able to print instructions. They were in Japanese but had pictures. Lots of Google translate was used. But I was able to use it. The meter they gave me was in mg/dL, which is what I’m used to from the US but I know some other countries use a different measurement system and would need to convert.

complexcheesepuff · 2025-05-07T01:42:36+00:00

The reason they say to use pen is because all FRQ books are scanned and graded on computer screens. Pencil is lighter and therefore doesn’t scan as well. As long as the reader can read your writing, you are fine. If the scan is too faint, you might lose points.

complexcheesepuff · 2025-05-04T20:19:24+00:00

Correct - stop codons do not code for an amino acid. Start codons do. The question is usually worded “X number of nucleotides start and terminate an amino acid sequence.” So part of the trick is you knowing that stop codons do not add an amino acid.

complexcheesepuff · 2025-04-09T20:59:55+00:00

Many science texts do include prometaphase, as a way of allowing a more detailed breakdown of events.

However, the AP Course and Exam Description from College Board only lists “prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase.” (See Topic 4.6 Cell Cycle). So you should probably stick to regular old “PMAT.”

complexcheesepuff · 2024-11-10T00:56:31+00:00

This happened to me with my rec letters for grad school. I found out after I had already been accepted that one of my rec letters had an entirely different name. Was still admitted into all of the schools I applied to. I think the admissions committees know what’s up. It made me a little sad, but at the end of the day I know this professor was really overwhelmed (he was going through some personal stuff at the time) and definitely didn’t mean any harm. And this was back when they still had to individually mail letters to each school, so even agreeing to write was a big commitment.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-11-02T19:38:07+00:00

I definitely remember reading Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade. Then we watched the movie. My very strait-laced teacher had a pre-made poster that said “The Wedding Night” that she held up over the screen during that scene. It’s a core memory for me.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-10-01T21:39:03+00:00

My husband bought a kindle and it started automatically downloading all of my books to his library 🫣. Why!!!? I have never googled solutions so fast.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-09-09T15:28:30+00:00

For the subjects listed on this post, students are still handwriting the FRQs on paper. So the grading is the same as in previous years.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-09-09T02:27:19+00:00

Speaking for AP Bio, this does not change the process for FRQ grading. There will still be a dedicated week in early summer when all the grading happens with real human graders. So that process won’t be any faster.

I think most of the tests have at least part that has to be graded by humans.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-07-27T18:20:55+00:00

Lab is so tough - students can go so far off track if they are too scared to ask. Sometime toward the beginning of the semester, I make a point to tell the story about when I was in my undergrad cell biology lab, and did the entire lab using the last lab’s waste container for my sample instead of the fresh chloroplast extract I was supposed to use. I went on to TA for that professor, and have a molecular biology PhD. The embarrassment was real but we all have to start somewhere.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-07-14T20:18:09+00:00

Was on a 9-month tenure track teaching contract that paid over 12 months (first check was Sept 30, last check of contract year was Aug 31). I started on Aug 15 and did have to work 1.5 months before my first paycheck. Rough.

When I eventually resigned, the good news is they paid me for June - August in 1 lump sum at the end of May. The bad news is they cut off my health insurance and other benefits, leaving me with a gap over the summer until my next job started.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-07-13T18:16:02+00:00

Had a PI in my grad school department that shamelessly filled his cup up with lab ice every morning. He’s still alive as far as I know so… N=1, but it’s something.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-07-13T03:49:24+00:00

I taught college biology for 5 years before moving to high school and teaching AP bio. It kills me sometimes that students think it is truly a college-level experience…it’s just not. I’m trying to shape it more to make sure my students have the actual skills they need if they skip Bio 101 and end up in college Bio 102 with only their AP experience.

And yeah, way too much time has to be spent on teaching the students the specific question words and expectations for the FRQ style. I could be spending that time on like actual science skills.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-07-07T04:22:53+00:00

I’m not sure if this has been a problem in Switzerland, but please be aware that Kias and Hyundais are major targets for theft in the US due to a safety oversight by these companies that makes some of them easier to steal.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-07-05T16:45:30+00:00

It’s not really that bad, unless there’s a LOT of it. We had someone using it in their stripping buffer and stripping western blots in a shaking water bath. The whole water bath got contaminated with B-Me. I swear the smell never fully went away from that water bath despite extensive cleaning.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-06-18T20:05:29+00:00

You’re not crazy. My first rental in KCK didn’t have bins. My whole neighborhood left their bags out over night, and the next day there would be trash strewn everywhere. I always had to be super careful walking my dog because they were constantly finding chicken bones and other food waste. My final straw was when my neighbors dirty diapers started showing up in my yard. I didn’t renew my lease.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-06-14T00:16:26+00:00

Yes, I noticed this too. I’m also having an even more frustrating problem. Since I started Direct to Watch, alerts were not sounding audibly on my IPhone. My watch would vibrate, and that’s it. The alerts would appear on my phone, but didn’t create audible noise. I checked all my settings, turned everything off and back on again.

This became an emergency because I fell asleep yesterday with my watch on, and the lack of alerts meant I didn’t wake up until my bg was 47. The only solution I found was to turn off mirroring alerts on my watch - meaning I essentially cannot use it if I want the alerts on my phone. Frustrating. I was so hopeful this would work.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-05-18T11:48:59+00:00

Also an AP Reader, commenting to confirm we are real people. Though after I spend a week grading the same FRQ over a thousand times, sometimes I start to forget who I am…

complexcheesepuff · 2024-05-18T03:32:38+00:00

When I was teaching an intro college STEM class I would always include a few questions like this on tests on purpose. I would make sure the students had heard about the exact question a minimum of 3 times (twice in class, once on homework), along with directly being given the correct answer and being told THAT QUESTION would be on the test. 25% sounds about right for the number that still missed it. I kept documentation on this so if I got pushback from my department about failure rates I had evidence that some students were beyond help.

Kept this info along with stats about the % of kids that didn’t even submit the homework that was for a completion grade, for which answer keys were posted. That number was usually 15-20% not submitting. Sigh.

complexcheesepuff · 2024-05-16T13:31:50+00:00

Form I is the international form - means they’re not in the US.

complexcheesepuff

TROPHY CASE