This subject was absolutely terrible. First issue was the pracs—my table had people who already knew each other from their schools and wouldn’t bother communicating. The table arrangements were terrible, and I literally couldn’t talk to anyone. Communication is two-way, yet I was rated down for group participation even though I contributed to the discussion and helped edit the entire piece. Secondly, the content was dry and unengaging. I liked how the seminars were delivered this time, but the ed discussion responses were terrible, exactly like last semester. I didn’t feel supported at all—the pracs made me feel upset, and I dreaded going to them because they made me feel lonely. The workshops were useless, the teachers weren’t helpful, and overall, the subject was awful.

I wouldn't blame this subject for being boring, given that it is only an introductory biology subject. But I will never understand why I'll be doing evolution and ecology to 'be prepared' for my higher-level human physiology and anatomy subjects. I'm a little disappointed at how I signed up for this course as a pre-med school course hoping to learn some human biology-related knowledge and be ready for medical school or nursing school, yet the first year has passed and I've learned nothing new compared to high school biology, and to be fair I learned more during IB HL Biology than this world top university subject. In terms of the subject itself, the organization is quite similar to BIOL10008, with a slight improvement in the report, being more clear and with more guidance (or maybe just because it's a group report for this subject.) I wouldn't give a high mark on both the content or the operation of this subject, however just like BIOL10008, anyone who intends to study biomedical subjects in the future will be taking this subject at some point in the study, so good luck.

This subject had its moments, but overall I despised the content and nearly fell asleep in the exam because of how boring it was. Thank God I never have to do an ecology subject again!! BTW I have absolutely no idea why this subject is a prerequisite for anatomy, physiology, microbiology, immunology, and a whole bunch of other biomedical majors - the department of Biology is taking the piss out of the many students who took this subject because they were expecting to be adequately prepared for second year. I know all about fungi reproduction, but I still don't know how kidneys filter blood or how immunity works because they had all the time in the world for ecology, yet they literally just name dropped actually relevant physiological and immunological processes without properly explaining them. As for the argument that ecology is instrumental background knowledge for the biomedical sciences... I'll be sure to report back if I ever need to use Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium or Malpighian tubules or cultural burning again in my academic career 🤣 Also, literally why did we not receive the paper NOR our answers for the MST?? What is the rationale behind gatekeeping one of the few resources given to students, which obviously wasn't very straightforward considering that the average was in the low 60's? Would love for them to explain how we could possibly improve without knowing what the hell we even wrote or what the bloody question was!! I understand that people hated how disorganised BIOL10008 was, but at least the content was fun and we received actual answers on Ed. I can't think of a single redeeming quality for this subject however, and for that it receives a 1 star from me!

HUGE improvement from life's machinery. loved this subject! it is content heavy but its quite easy to do well on the assessments. don't fall too far behind and you should be fine!

Overall, it was a fair subject. We were given more resources to do well in our report than Life’s Machinery, which helped me perform better in the subject in general. In terms of content, it was pretty dry; mostly about ecology and conservation of species. The quizzes were pretty okay, but sadly no free marks were given as opposed to last semester with Life’s Machinery, however, I was very glad that we were given feedback for all our quizzes so that we can improve in preparation to the final exam. The lecturers varied a lot as well; some were super detailed in their lecture slides and were super informative, whilst others only included useless screenshots or diagrams which made the lecture slides quite redundant. The subject coordinators were also quite passive aggressive at times; there was one time where someone on Campuswire presumably posted questions that were on the quiz to the platform, and as a person that uses that platform almost simultaneously, there was no instance of that and apparently it was from the normal bio people (not sure though). Regardless, I do find this subject to be more organised (not as interesting because I am not too interested in ecology) and my grades weren’t too bad either (although it was scaled down).