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My biology teacher was professor Darvas Zsuzsanna. She was like a mother to nervous 1st year students. Only later have I realized how much she went out of her way to help us learn.
The first few weeks passed by fast and Biology was the first midterm I ever had at Semmelweis Medical University.
It was an oral examination on eukaryotic cell biology and some lab stuff. I walked out of there with 4 and 4, pretty satisfied. It turned out that more than half of the students in my group failed that exam.
I learned two things (after later contemplation) from that exam: (1) What grade you get on a short, oral exam depends on many, many things; (2) a student that gets 4 and 4 is not necessarily a better student than one that receives 1 and 1, especially not if they have different examinators.
Since the Hungarian medical education is built upon the notion of a pre-clinical and clinical separation, there are some fundamental subjects for students to master before they 'try their luck' on medical courses. Biology is one of these cornerstones.
I bought The Essential Cell for this course and it was enough for me. Some people in my class opted for the big version (The Cell) and I sometimes wish I had bought that instead, but if you take good notes and are good at using the internet (these pages included) you should be fine without.
The first semester focused on essential cell biology. The different between eukaryotes and prokaryotes, and intricate details regarding cellular components of our body. The lab work was also facinating (we got to look at chick embryos etc).
The second semester was a continuation of the first with the introduction of genetics. I love genetics and it was a very enjoyable semester.
What upset me about Biology was the following:
The department decided to add minus points to certain questions on the written exam. I was one of the first students to take the exam and when I took it, they had 30 questions behind which there was a -1 score if you got it wrong.
Almost all the students failed that exam, including me.
I sat down with the department to go over my test and I would have passed if it wasn't for the minus points. This is not the problem, but students complained about the minus points and the department then decreased the amount and eventually removed them completely. At the end of the exam period, there were no minus points on the Biology exam (so none of the questions resultet in -1 point if you got it wrong). This resultet in a great advantage for those students that took their exam at the end of the exam period.
The test itself wasn't easier as the exam period progressed, but one got a better grade for answering the exam same if one took the exam late.
This was during the semifinal, though. The department changed this during the Spring final exam, but I think this type of experimenting with examinations is not something I would expect from a University with such a long history. Find something that works and stick with it.
No grudge, though. Seriously.
Having the knowledge when you need it is the ONLY thing that matters.
I have never heard a patient be comforted by "Hey, don't worry! I got a 5 in surgery five years ago, so I bet I know what I'm doing....left leg, right?"