Need advice, please help

[Doctor Fate]

Okay so currently I am taking grade 11 Biology at the University level.

I think I am doing very well so far, because I love biology and I am enjoying it. However, for one thing, I don't like the teacher very much because I got in trouble for being late... even though I only walked in about 30 seconds after the bell rang and was in my seat before they started playing "O Canada" and he's just kind of a difficult person to get along with. The fact that it's right first period doesn't help much either because I have a lot of icy and snowy terrain to trudge over in order to get to school.

Also, I am taking English at the University level, I have it second period right after Biology. I do not like the teacher I have for this class, either. I have heard a lot of very bad things about him from people who have had him before, and so far those rumours are proving to be true, and he seems like a real jerk to me. I also do not like the way he teaches, either, making us relate stupid Calvin and Hobbes comics and clips from Lord of the Rings to English literature. None of my previous two teachers did silly things like that and frankly, I hate it.

I am thinking of dropping Biology and taking it next year, and taking grade 11 Uni level Chemistry second period so I can take English first period with a different teacher... but I'm a little scared of such a big change in my schedule, because I am very happy with my classes, just don't feel like they are working out so well... I don't know what the other English teacher is going to be like, so I'm worried about that.

Also, I don't know how well I will do in 3U Chemistry. Has anyone else taken Chemistry at this level? Is it very hard? What does the course load entail? :(

Any other advice? I need to decide by Monday or I'm screwed. :(

[2D]

Just tough it out. That's all I can say.

[Doctor Fate]

Should I switch or stick with it, though? :(

[2D]

Tough it out means stick with it. You can't always take the easy way in life. It's the shitty times that makes the good times feel good.

[Doctor Fate]

It's not really an "easy way out". I'm not exactly getting "out" of much...

[BlackBetty]

Like my teachers say, "late is late". You should have left 30 seconds earlier, and you wouldn't have been late.

I would tough it out. Everyone has weird teachers but we deal with it.

[INFERNO]

I say stay in biology. When I was doing biology and chemistry in high-school, I had the same teacher in grade 11 and 12 for these courses. At the time, it was brutal. The length of her tests was ridiculous and we complained because there was not enough time to complete it and she told us that. Her teaching skills weren't great either because she was mostly a verbal textbook. She made powerpoints but so much of it was word-for-word from the book and the rest was either copied from websites or she reworded it just a bit. I found that in university, her method was very helpful as it prepared me for the level of intensity, although she was less strict on how to do the labs.

I stayed in it because I love biology so if you love biology and are doing good in it, then stay in it. If you drop it, chances are you'll get the same teacher and the issues you have with him now are still going to be there. So don't drop it just because you don't care for your teacher. If I did that, I'd have dropped out of many courses but I didn't.

For chemistry, because of what I learned in grade 12, first-year and second-year chemistry, I'm actually a bit unsure of what was learned when. But, I think if I remember correctly, it was organic chemistry. In high-school, organic chemistry is a joke, it's pathetically easy. In fact, I loved it because of how easy it was but once you get to university and take at least 2nd year in it, then you find out high-school is mickey-mouse (for all courses pretty much too).

There's very, very little math involved but from the other thread you made, I believe you stated math isn't a problem. Lots of it involves mental imaging or you can use physical ball-and-stick models but I never bothered to use them as they were too much of a pain to build. You need to memorize and understand how and why certain reactions occur and you'll need to give theoretical models as to how to get molecule A to be molecule B.

Question though: have you learned the VSEPR theory? If not, you'll definitely learn it otherwise it's going to be hard to understand the interaction of the molecules.

I can possibly answer some questions for chemistry although my main focus in university is on neuroscience, such as a 3rd-year biology course on the neurophysiology of cells at a cellular level involving some physics of electrical circuits.

For being late, well, I had this same problem but it's worse now at university. After my 2nd year stats tutorial where we do quizzes, I have to run down a flight of stairs, across campus to another seperate building, then get to the lecture. Unfortunately, we do the quizzes at the very end so leaving early means I have to rush the quiz. It's not a big problem for me now because the lecture is about 3 hours long.