What I'm doing ....

Maybe some of you are not clear of what I'm studying/doing now at USM...

I'm from School of Biological Science, a.k.a Life Science...
There are 2 big branches -- Pure Biology & Applied Biology
The one I am given is Pure Biology, as what I chose as my 2nd choice.

At the 1st year, both types of Biology students study the same courses, the same syllabus..... the only difference is that at the first semester, Pure Bio's take the core units which will be taken by Applied Bio's at the second semester; and vice versa....
We will choose our Major after the first year study. The majors available for Pure Biology students are Animal Biology, Microbiology; and Plant Biology.
While for Applied Biology's, they have more choices -- Agrobiology, Aquatic Biology, Biology and Management of Vector and Parasite, Biotechnology; and Environmental Biology.

http://www.usm.my/bio/index.htm

erm... I'm still confused of which major I'm going to choose, it depends on my result, my going-to-be-discovered interest etc.... ahaha...

At this 1st semester, the courses I'm taking are:
Basic core courses:
1. Biodiversity - 3units
2. Ecology - 3units
3. Biostatistics - 4units
4. Organic Chemistry - 3units
5. Practical of Biodiversity & Ecology - 2units
University Courses (compulsory):
6. Entrepreneurship - 2units
7. Bahasa Malaysia - 2units

Out of maximum units = 20 that can be taken, I've registered online for 19~
but for the practical of biodiversity & ecology, we will only do it after the semester exam, it is during the semester break = holiday ~.~

For biodiversity, the lecturer teaching us microbial diversity is actually very experienced, according to him, he's going to retire, and we are the youngest batch he has ever taught!
However, most of us don't really understand the lectures given as they are too hard, especially the examples given. He is passionate in teaching microbiology and expects us to know everything, just like those 3rd year students, the postgraduates'.... @@
I'm left behind of the lectures now ... T_T

Ecology.... is still okay so far. We have been grouped into 5 persons per group according to our names' alphabetical oder. Each group has been assigned 40 trees in the campus to be observed.
My group leader (the first person in the group list) has divided 40 trees by 5, so each of us has 8 trees to take charge of. My 8 "lovely" trees are located at higher latitude.... I have to "climb up the hill" (tar-paved slope) to reach the destination everyday..........! ehehe... I'm not that hardworking by the way... =p
We also need to pass up the weekly report of what we could see from the tree, the flora and fauna found, the weather etc...
After few months (forgot how many months), we will have to write a scientific report and make presentation.

Biostatistics, the first few chapters are like what we learned in form 6, such as binomial distribution, normal distribution, poisson distribution, graphs etc... The chapters behind seem hard... haha..
Because of Biostatistics, I am busy on weekend... as the Lecturer gives us an assignment (homework..) to do every Friday, and we have to pass up on Monday in the tutorial class before it starts............
I only managed to get a B for the 1st assignment, but able to get A on 2nd one ohohoo.... (because I've my senior's as reference, but hey please don't misunderstand me, I did put in my own effort to find out the solutions! and not 100% questions are the same, okay! I can explain to you why the answer I wrote is so and so.... because I'm not a copycat!)

Organic Chemistry... you know... it's kinda boring to attend the lectures as they are almost the same as the ones we learned in form 6... but of course, it's not 100% the same, we learn deeper and some other aspects that we didn't know before...
We also need to attend the tutorial class for this course, and we have to pass up the assignments by the date given in the course outline! Normally, we have to do those questions before they are taught by lecturer .... although we learned them before, they were hard to answer... for the first 2 assignments, I did last minute work again, haiz.... hopefully I can get good marks for them *praying*

For the Entrepreneurship course, all of the first year students taking this is having lectures together at the big DTSP hall.... there are so many of us in the hall!
We also form a group of 5 to do projects. The lecturer asked us to find groupmates on our own in the hall, bonus marks would be given if the group consists of different genders & backgrounds.
My group consists of 3 malay girls, a malay guy and a chinese girl (me!). All of us are from Bio School. They are nice I can say, they are hardworking too! I'm glad to be in the same group with them.
So far, we have been given tasks to complete almost every week... hence we always meet up at library to do discussion...

Too bad to say I need to take Bahasa Malaysia. eh... it's not Me only required to take, although I just obtained a B3 in SPM, the matter is, every USM student is compulsory to take it!
I rarely use Malay nowadays... I've to crack my head to think for malay vocabularies to write essay of 500-600 words! We need to do presentation too... and by speaking Standard Bahasa Malaysia (so called bahasa baku).
We learn more grammar (tatabahasa) and have to correct the sentences which are grammatically wrong... oh oh oh... it's Hard!

That's all for now, you may not understand 100% what I've said though, just in case You don't know at all what I'm doing here, so... at least you get some ideas now!
hehe =)