Oh biology, why have you betrayed me?

You and I used to get on so well. When I would panic over German or Music you’d look at me calmly and say “don’t worry, there’s always me, I’ll be there for you”. You were the one exam I looked forward to and felt no fear about sitting. And through it all you offered me protection, a lot of love and affection, where I was right or wrong.

And then on the 11th of June you turned around and slapped me in the face.

After all the time and effort I put in to you, getting to know you, learning your odd quirks and habits, you present yourself to me asking almost mocking questions, requiring me to write love notes on the pulse, placenta and various other delights but never telling me when it’s enough.

You used to be cool biology. You and I used to get on so well. Instead of being my faithful friend you turned your back on my today and played hard to get. Instead of leaving me blissfully happy like that little minx French did yesterday, you instead left me puzzled and unsure about who mastered who today. We’ll see who has the last laugh in August.

For shame Biology.

32 thoughts on “Oh biology, why have you betrayed me?”

  1. I hate the way that always happens in science subjects! You think you’ve learnt everything you can possibly be asked, then… Like the chemistry mock. o___0

    Oh, your post reminded me that I have to study the entire music course for a week’s time. Damn.

  2. HaHa. Nice summing up. I loved that fox question though. To be honest it threw me at first. It said like read this thingy and i was all like”Fuck that shit, i dont wanna be wasting my time reading about dumb foxes, ill just skip to the questions!” And the the first question was like ” What other then mating do foxes do during the mating season” I was like Huh??? I was going to write that they sniff each others buts or something, but then i read the passage and burst out laughing, people looked at me and shit but it was all good.

  3. I had no idea how long a note was meant to be so I just wrote everything I could think of…so my notes ranged from a sentence to a full on paragraph.

    Did anyone get the first part of the respiration question? Was was Y and what was the role of NAD+?

    @PJ yeah that fox question was great, it was basically a reading comprehension like! Didn’t like the bit about the quantitative survey though!

  4. i loved that fox question! i had a maniac smile on my face the whole time i was doing it.
    I think Y was a phosphate but then im not sure cause it mentioned losing a phosphate in part (i).
    and NAD+ traps and transfers electrons and hydrogen ions

  5. Ah that’s what I said about the NAD+, except I said it forms NADH which transfers electrons and hydrogens.

    I was goinb to write phosphate for Y, but they gave it in the question before so I thought it seemed a bit too obvious =/

    Thanks!

  6. Respiration blows chunks! I forgot what that thingy for counting plants was called on the quantitative survey, so i just called it a flower counting square or something like that!

    Heya Grace!

  7. oh i agree with ya….i was confident going in…and so shaky coming out………noooooooo!!!! it was bad bad bad!!!!!!

  8. @PJ haha flower counting square, nice one. I couldn’t describe it properly, so I drew it, then I realised it was meant to have ten squares in each row, not 8, so I wrote “it looks like this, but with 10 squares not eight” I completely made up how we presented our findings too.

  9. I think you had to do it like 10 times and get the average percentage. I can’t check it out cus i burnt my bio book earlier.

  10. You burned your book? Think of the environemnt, has biology taught you nothing?! :p

    @Bobby yeah I thought the questions seemed pretty vague so I sort of wrote rambly spiels for a lot, where a few words would have sufficed =/

  11. I said “Y” was energy in the respiration question, it seemed obvious at the time but everyone else I’ve asked has said something different…

  12. Yeah I said energy, then I crossed it out and wrote respiration….then I crossed that out and wrote “energy from respiration”

  13. Oh how perfectly you sum it up! *sigh* I thought it was going to be an A1 presented to me on a platter. The answers swayed between excess of ease and frustratingly never ending.

    Will anybody define for me just how much a ‘note’ on something is?

    Oh leaving cert – you’ll never cease to frustrate me – tedious A’s, ridiculously simple B’s and C’s that we’re….well…….composed and illustrated by a man/women who had one two many to drink in the process……….

    Final thoughts………Chemistry…….SAVE ME!!

  14. Am I the only one who skipped that question?
    I did ecology, genetics, blood/eye and breathing/whatever the first part was. Some parts were shaky (like the belt transect/quantitative study thing) but I feel a’ight about it. A little worried that I used too much simple phrasing and not enough technical terms though.

    Section A and B pissed my shit off. I half-answered almost every question in A, and in section B I only recognised one experiment (the stupid ‘cut the plant with a razor and bash it under the microscope’ one)

  15. I answered all the questions in A and B, but some of the questions were a bit vague and I wasn’t sure what they were looking for, especially “how did you examine the stem”. At the same time though, you’d probably be amazed at the most obvious stuff they’d give marks for.

  16. Likewise – Some of my notes stretched beyond 3/4 of a page and others were a line.

    As for the respiration Q, I was just about to start it as a back up when it was snatched by my new superintendent. One would genuinely think she was trained to work in a concentration camp. (the duration of a trip to the bathroom was recorded on my paper to the second?) I’m usually in a huge hall but only 4 of us do biology so I was sentenced to 3 hours with her.

    But back to the actually exam………did anybody think the questions we’re really vague and as well? A lot of major topics we’re skipped in favor of the likes of ‘the pulse’ and ‘the affect of exercise on the heart’ etc. I’m certainly not suggesting that they are irrelevant subject matter – they just seem a tad less important in my eyes

  17. As in literally burnt it? Wow…….that’s some passionate hatred right there. That said, I was quite tempted to do the same to my poetry books/notes/any page in my possession with reference to Elizabeth Bishop’s miserable life on it……….

  18. Well put, Elizabeth!

    I actually thought Biology was very loyal to me, though.
    Here’s my overview of the test.

    Section A
    Very fair array of questions, answered them all. Hydrotropism was real sexy!

    Section B
    Despite being a bit incoherent and the questions that seemed to repeat themselves in the Dicot question it was pretty good. Immobilisation. NICE!!

    Section C
    Did everything but the ecology question, regrettably at second glance.
    Really, I thought pretty much all of Section C was softcore, just the “write notes on” questions were a tad bit tedious.

    Overall I think I aced it, and I’ll probably get my 100 for it.

    So, it seems Biology was faithful to me, its benevolent master! I tamed the beast and was met only by love.

  19. Really, some people worked very hard at Biology and really wanted A1’s only to find that the paper didn’t suit them at all.

    Your smugness increases their misery twentyfold ๐Ÿ™

  20. 100 in biology may be a bit presumptious considering first off, the manner in which it is marked and the sheer volume of people out for an A1. The LC is a competition and it is rare they (the examiners) ever vary the amount of A1’s issued. Really, I think you may have made a mistake in answering all of the Section C questions with the exception of ecology. That time you spent could have been better invested in solidifying full marks in the 4 you had to do.
    I agree with what Liam says: your smugness may cause some people to freak out a bit and is, in my opinion, a bit premature.

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