AP Biology Through the Eyes of a Teaching Assistant

This article was part of a series by the Board of Student Academic Support Services (SASS) that interviewed OHS course peer tutors about the courses they tutor. You can book an appointment with these peer tutors through the OHS Writing Center, which can be found on the OHS Gateway site. 

SASS: What did you enjoy about this course?

Katherine Davis (‘20): My favorite thing about AP Biology was being able to learn about all of the interesting biological systems. I really enjoy soaking in as much information as I can, especially when it comes to biology. I find the natural world so intriguing, and it feels so nice to look at something as simple as a houseplant or as complex as a cactus and be able to know what its cells look like or hypothesize about how it evolved. 

SASS: What challenged you the most in AP Biology? How did you overcome those challenges?

Katherine: What challenged me the most about AP Biology was probably the readings. They are very dense, and I tend to have the bad habit of going into auto-read sometimes and then I find myself not remembering a word from the past three pages I've read. They are also quite long, and often go over complicated material. The way I overcame this challenge was by practicing (as the year went on I got better and better at handling the dense readings and stopping myself from auto-reading) and also by watching the lectures first. I found that watching the lectures first helped me understand the basic ideas behind that day's lesson, and then when I went and did the readings I was able to get a more detailed picture, without getting lost in the denseness of the textbook. 

SASS: What tips do you have that could be useful to students taking this course?

Katherine: My biggest tip for doing well in AP Biology is to ask lots of questions! This course covers an immense amount of material and even if you watch all the lectures and complete all the reading, you will still forget things or need more clarification. Don't hesitate to ask questions in class, go to office hours or reach out to me or a peer tutor! 

SASS: About how much time a week did you spend working on assignments and preparing for discussion sections in AP Biology?

Katherine: I spent about 2 hours preparing for each discussion section. However, the time varied depending on the point I was at in the course (it took me longer to prepare to at the beginning of the year) and the topic we were going over. Some of the more complicated anatomical topics took me about 3-4 hours to prepare for. I spent between 4-8 hours on the weekly FRQs and labs.

SASS: What was your favorite topic covered in this course?

Katherine: My favorite topic was probably one of the anatomy ones! I really enjoyed learning about the nervous system and the immune system, since they were both so complex and its amazing to see how complicated animal bodies are. We also got to do dissections on some small animals, which was kind of messy, but it definitely helped me gain a better understanding of physiology. 

SASS: What assignments did you enjoy doing in AP Biology?

Katherine: I really liked the FRQs! FRQs are these writing assignments where you answer questions about that week's lesson in paragraph form. They are a lot of fun since the questions are set up to make you use your knowledge of a concept to infer the answer. 

SASS: How well did this course prepare you for the AP exam?

Katherine: OHS's AP Biology course really prepared me for the AP exam. I didn't find the AP exam intriguing and it seemed to be testing how fast you could write bland, general sentences rather than how much you knew. The OHS midterms and finals were much more interesting, and though they were hard, I actually enjoyed them! 

SASS: Do you have any other comments on AP Biology?

Katherine: AP Biology is an awesome course! However, it is not easy and it is natural to make mistakes along the way. Don't hesitate to ask questions and get help on concepts you find hard. I hope you enjoy the course as much as I do!