Exams

Other than for multiple choice tests, past exam papers are available. Naturally we become intimately familiar with them, noting style, format and content in order to judge what are most likely topics to appear this time.

The Biochemistry exam offers four questions of which two must be answered. For the last five years, one question has been on carbohydrates, one on lipids, one on nucleic acids and one on enzymes, except the enzyme one has always been impossible, as it was this year. Only when brushing my teeth in the evening did I realise that I'd drawn and described an ester bond instead of a glycosidic bond in the carb question.

The Whole Organism Biology exam requires ten questions to be completed in an hour, and the past four years' papers have repeated about five of the questions. I had my annotated drawing of the heart all ready, but in the event it wasn't needed. Luckily I'd practised drawing the hormone levels for the menstrual cycle, and the cross-section of the brain, but nothing this time on open and closed circulation (arthropods and molluscs have open circulation, where there is no separation between blood and lymph, in case you care).

Then Dietetics this morning, and it's all over at last! Not too bad today, although I think I might have got the Atwater factor wrong for carbohydrates (how many kcal there are in a gram). Now I'm off to make soup, clean the kitchen floor, renew the sealant in the shower, find a new string for the electric blanket, pay the builder for the kitchen roof, book a service for the car and put a whole lot of stuff on Freecycle to see if I can clear some space in my room. I might even need more shelving...