I haven't been doing any experiments this week for two reasons. First of all, my results were kind of...interesting. Una suggested I take a day or two to think about it, come up with some hypotheses and some simple experiments to get a handle on what's going on. More importantly, though, next Monday evening is the first exam for my Cell Biology class. The first exam is especially notorious for tripping people up because many people are still trying to figure out how prepare and how to approach the problems. Fortunately they have posted the exam from the previous two years, which has been a really great help in giving me an idea of the kinds of questions and answers they are looking for.
It's been really weird coming to lab and not actually doing any experiments. On the other hand, it's been nice to spend the time to prepare and practice; I'm feeling pretty confident. One big difference with the exam is that the questions are all experimentally based. Therefore, the fact that the exam is open note/book actually doesn't help you that much. What we have to do is apply our knowledge of a system (say, vesicular trafficking) and interpret experimental results that are thrown at us. This interpretation requires a knowledge of the techniques (and what they do and don't tell you) as well as a basic understanding of the subject (which can be supplemented by notes). But coming up with the interpretation, and then designing new experiments to answer new questions, are all coming from you, not from your notes. Fortunately, I did get some of that with my last cell bio class, though I would say it made up between 30 and 50% of any given test.
I'm not terribly concerned about the exam - the material is all pretty familiar to me anyway, and the practice exams have been very useful - but Monday will be the day of truth. We'll see. Needless to say, this weekend will be wholly devoted to it.
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