Metabolic Pathways is probably the most difficult module I've taken this year, and that's because the nature of metabolic pathways is that they are complicated, and at first it will seem like there's a lot of arbitrary information with no way to make sense of it. And to some degree that's probably true, especially if you take each lecture and each pathway or cycle you learn in isolation.
The lecturer always started with a real life medical case study of a metabolic condition that was quite unknown at the time, describing the situations and symptoms with a nice descriptive flavour. I found it quite useful as a starting point because it allowed me to connect the diagrams that I was seeing to the real life effects of what happens when it goes wrong, and then at the end the lecturer finished the story with a diagnosis after we'd just spent the hour learning the bodily process.
You'll be learning about things like amino acid synthesis and breakdown, Krebs cycle regulation, metabolism surrounding purines and pyrimidines, the urea cycle, stuff like that.
The best way to learn about metabolic pathways is to build up a mental library of tools your body uses to alter chemical species incrementally in order to make the desired product, and to appreciate that metabolic pathways don't exist in isolation, and to try and form connections when you can.
As for the practicals, I wasn't the biggest fan. Unlike in Microbial Physiology there was virtually no link between lecture content and practicals, and frankly sometimes we were doing things that I was doing back in year 13, and that we had already done in the previous year. They might as well have been two different modules. The practical questions were often vague and ambiguous and it was hard to guess what they wanted, so if you're going to take this module I suggest the following: Get things done early because you could run into unforeseen issues and collaborate with your peers.
Just don't leave anything, including learning lecture content, to the last minute because you will forget stuff that was hard to grasp in the first place. It has to be a sustained effort.
You'll enjoy the module if you engage with the lectures and supplement them with independent learning, and if learning about the essential processes that keep us alive is your cup of tea. Stryer and Berg's Biochemistry is by and large the book that this module was based off, right down to the diagrams so be sure to refer to that. And with enough prep beforehand and collaborative effort afterwards you might even be able to tolerate the practicals. Hope that helps.
