Nicholas Mack

End-of-Year Reflection

AP Biology for me was an extremely challenging yet rewarding

course. When I first entered the class last September, I thought the
class would be similar to any other high-level science class. The AP
next to the course name really had no effect on me. As the year went
on, however, I began to realize how different this class was from any
other science/ math class I had taken in high school. The tests, rather
than just being assessment on the chapter, assessed my ability to
relate biological concepts to the real world. One prompt would be
several paragraphs long, followed by six or seven questions that tested
your ability to fully understand what it was actually saying. These
tests, both lengthy and wordy, were extremely difficult for me and
were partially the reason why I struggled both semesters. Had these
tests been easier, I would have probably done well in this course.
However, what I did really well on, and what partially saved my grade
in this class, were the labs. All the labs we did in this class were
extremely interesting. Because we did so many of them throughout the
year, I think I definitely perfected my lab-writing skills. Probably the
most interesting lab we did was the pGLO lab where my group had to
transfer DNA to a bacterial cell and analyze its effects. The lab was
both easy and intuitive and I got to work with really smart people in
the process. On the other hand, the most challenging lab that I did in
this class was the osmosis/ diffusion lab. The lab itself was not very
difficult. All we did was conduct three easy experiments testing the
diffusive properties of water. The part that made it hard, on the
contrary, was the lab-writing process, where we had to write five to ten
report based on our findings. In our data section, we needed to
incorporate things such as standard deviation and standard error into
our calculations. The entire lab-writing process took about a week.
Though I ended up doing well on it, the osmosis / water lab really
introduced me to college-level lab writing and made me a better writer.
The unit that I found most interesting in this course was the immune
system. Though it was one of the harder chapters I encountered this
year, the immune system, for me, was really intriguing because I got to
learn how the human body fights off some of the most destructive
viruses. I had no idea that our systems were that advanced! The
chapter, in addition, introduced me to the field of cancer research that
I really want to learn more about in the future.
Overall, AP Biology was a good indicator of what college-level
science is like. Because I struggled a lot throughout the year, this
course made me rethink about my potential field of study in college
and my future career. However, by taking this course, I also have a
greater appreciation for people who conduct research in this field and
who devote their lives to Biology.