“Can I really do Higher Level?” I was saying to myself last night. I was looking at my pre paper - 32% - I didn’t study then so you’d think that it would be easy enough for me to do honours and pass but on the other hand, I hadn’t really done much work on Biology since the pre’s and I felt that my passing would have been reliant on me getting both easy questions and a sympathetic corrector!
I didn’t feel like riding my luck though and I decided to be happy with the 35-40 points I could get in Ordinary biology rather than risk failing honours for a small chance of me getting 40-50 points. So this morning when the supervisor was handing out the papers I requested to change down to pass.
I opened the paper and it did look fairly daunting but thankfully I had checked out a marking scheme the night before and realised that the marks were “top-heavy” meaning that the majority of marks were going for the initial answers and a minority of marks go for further points that you add (eg: 10 marks for first point, 5 for second, 3 for third and 2 for forth). This suited me down to the ground as Honours biology requires that you know the course in great detail whereas Ordinary allows you to get marks without this indepth knowledge. However, knowing one or two topics in great detail doesn’t get rewarded in Ordinary because of the distribution of the marks - you’re far better knowing a bit about everything than everything about a bit!
There were certainly questions that I choked on and had to take wild guesses at but I am quite confident of a good result as I did attempt every question with “educated” guesses. I’m not happy that I couldn’t remember anything about the Protein test though which formed a question on Section 2 although I did draw a nice diagram on Rhizopus which I had just revised before going into the exam 
I left after 2 hours and was one of the last pass guys to leave, so I’m quite confident of a high C in it which mightn’t sound like much but by my logic it’s better than failing at honours level!
Tomorrow is History, a subject with a course so vast that you can only hope that something you study comes up! So as long as the GAA, De Valera in Power, theNazi state and The Role of Post War Women comes up then I’ll be in great shape. If only….
i did the bio honours paper. god knows i stayed up all night drowning myself between the pages of the revision book i pretty much depended on. i concentrated on DNA and RNA, genetic crosses, protein synthesis, all those really impossible stuff.
i was thankful enough that i did pass french. it had always been manageable for me so i didnt worry too much about revising anything. every brain cell i had worked on remembering the definitions of sex linkage and the difference between vessels and tracheids..
when i read over the short questions, they were ok enough..and i think i smiled when i read over the long questions.. the questions could have been harder and the topics i studied could have been put in different questions ( i was studying the nitrogen cycle before i went in and it came up, too bad ive forgotten about them already).
i’ve always liked biology, until i got 50% in my mocks and i had to hear my teacher say that she was disappointed in me.. the last thing i wanted to hear. my best friend is practically the smartest brain in our year and she can ace anything in her sleep. i kind of felt pressurised especially that i sit beside her in biology.
i hope i did well enough on that exam.. man!! chemistry tomorrow. chemistry i almost loathe, i dont know how i survived doing honours.
i hope all the easy experiments come up.. come to think of it, none of them are actually easy..