Re-Cap of Verbal III

Hey everyone!

I have attached to this email the reminders sheet I handed out in class.  Please make sure to look at it and cover everything you need to as we move forward into the two months before the MCAT (for most of you).

Also, there is a survey.  There is an honors banquet on the night we should have MSCT III.  I would really like to go to it (I'm crossing my fingers I win something!), and I want to make sure you get everything out of this course you should (i.e., I'm not calling in a sub for our last session, duh).  So I found five days that I can do the class, all around when we would be ending.  I'm cognizant of the fact that finals periods start on 12/6 for Drexel, and 12/11 for USP (Penn's a bit later, at least).  So I'm trying not to delay it too much -- I don't want to run into everyone's finals.

Please fill out the survey (if you can, try to do it by class tomorrow so I can let you know the result then):

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dDZTX1BfQTdNNU1LcVBhZTExa3hfWHc6MQ

To reinforce what we have covered in Verbal Reasoning III, complete the following:

• Verbal Reasoning Section Tests!

Helpful Hints:

• If you are having trouble with identifying the argument in a passage, revisit the Arguments Basic workshop to review the key components of an argument.
• For Inference Questions, the correct answer is an inference that MUST be true, not one that simply MIGHT be true.  For example, if I were to state to you that we are currently in the month of March (but did not tell you the exact date in March) the only MCAT-valid inferences to be made are that we are NOT in the season of Summer or Autumn and that we MUST be in either Winter or Spring.  To infer that simply because it is March it must be Spring is wrong (because it MIGHT be Spring or it MIGHT be Summer).
• Continue to work on your Writing Sample databases.  Read articles from the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, or Scientific American for ideas and examples that relate to the ten Writing Sample prompt categories.  If you haven’t done so already, look at the Writing Sample Items link:

http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/preparing/writingsampleitems.htm

• Just because I’m a major nerd and I LOVE musicology, I’d like to share with you pieces from each of the composers in that passage on page 404:
  • Mendelssohn:  Violin Concerto in E Minor, op. 64, mvt. III (How playful!)
  • Mendelssohn:  Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream (Bet you didn’t know that was Mendelssohn!)
  • Wagner:  Prelude from Tristan Und Isolde (Interesting fact:  the chord on the fourth note here, called the Tristan chord, has had more articles written on it than any other chord in music history.)
  • Wagner:  Prelude from Das Rheingold (The opening chord is supposed to be the entire Earth resonating).
  • Schoenberg:  "Nacht" from Pierrot Lunaire (Schoenberg’s best-known piece.  The weird vocal delivery is called “Sprechtstimme,” – literally, talk-sing – and I’m pretty sure the people who made this video were on some VERY strong drugs).
  • Schoenberg:   Prelude from Piano Suite, op. 25 (Pardon me?)

We have Organic Chemistry III on deck, which has the following Preview assignments:

• Organic Chemistry Review Notes Chapters 11, 12, 14 and 15.
  • These chapters cover the synthesis and reactions of amines, spectroscopy, separations and purifications techniques, and biological molecules (carbohydrates, fatty acids, proteins).   There is no OWQ associated with Organic Chemistry III (yay!).
  • The most important topics are separations and purifications and biological molecules.  With respect to biological molecules, you do not need to memorize the structures of any specific molecules like glucose or histidine, but you are expected to be familiar with the basic chemical structure of these molecules and properties derived from them.  We’ll talk about it further next time.

And that’s all I have to say!  Wow, my shortest email ever.  See you at Orgo III!