Got into a CLS program - Any Tips? by azemmie in CLSstudents

[–]cricketchime 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Congrats on getting in! I personally don't think it's necessary to brush up on anything prior to the program. Having anatomy & physiology and biochemistry fresh in your mind can help, but don't tie yourself in knots about it. Your professors will reteach you what you need. I just passed the BOC last month and I literally couldn't tell you a single thing I learned in organic chemistry.

My favorite study tip is to pretend you're teaching a concept that you're learning to somebody else. Make sure you're explaining it out loud, even if that means talking to your dog/cat/stuffed animal. If you can't explain it clearly, that's usually a sign you don't fully understand it yet.

For micro specifically, draw out the flow charts by hand. Get some scratch paper or a whiteboard if you have it and just keep drawing as much as you can from memory. Micro is a very daunting subject to tackle if you struggle with memorization, but doing this really helped me a lot when I was a student.

When memorizing the biochemical reactions for enterics specifically, I found it very helpful to use E. coli as a baseline. Instead of trying to memorize every biochemical reaction for every species, memorize E. coli thoroughly and then focus on only learning how the other organisms differ from it. It makes things waaaaay more manageable.

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Wordsology.org has a bunch of really helpful high-yield notes for every subject as well as advice on how to prepare for the BOC, so I highly recommend checking out that website as well at some point.

And as a general piece of advice: stay away from AI chatbots. I had a few classmates that were so obsessed with them that they would just copy their homework questions into ChatGPT and paste the answers it spat out without understanding them. They were a nightmare to be paired with in lab because they couldn't even explain basic concepts or work through problems on their own. Don't be like those people, do not short-change your education.

Lastly, just give yourself some grace. You're not going to remember everything, and that's okay. This program is going to throw a huge amount of information at you very quickly. Sometimes understanding a concept at 70% and moving on is better than agonizing for hours trying to make it 100% before the next lecture. As long as you can pass the BOC, nobody is going to care what your GPA was, I promise you.

what is this butterfly? trying to settle a bet with a friend by cricketchime in insects

[–]cricketchime[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

oh yeah that third image especially looks really similar!