Rant: I hate college Chemistry...

[ColdFusion718]

I totally feel you on it. With these large, weed-out classes, these are some of the things they do to filter out the masses who won't make it later on.

When I took intro to chem at a university, they had a guy who barely spoke English. My lab TA (the head TA) was a total prick.

He never gave anyone a perfect on their lab. I actually came close--he deducted 1 point for the 3 times I forgot to put the subscript (l) for H2O which was obviously just in liquid form.

I wrote: measure 100mL of water and then some equation but left out the (l) subscript lol. Good thing it was the only chem class I needed.

 

[Brainonska511]

Hm... I'm skipping Gen Chem this year and hopped right into an Organic Chem class (I had a 5 on the AP Chem, so it placed me out of a whole year of Chem at UChicago). Though, the labs don't look too bad (first one is tomorrow).

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: ColdFusion718
I totally feel you on it. With these large, weed-out classes, these are some of the things they do to filter out the masses who won't make it later on.

When I took intro to chem at a university, they had a guy who barely spoke English. My lab TA (the head TA) was a total prick.

He never gave anyone a perfect on their lab. I actually came close--he deducted 1 point for the 3 times I forgot to put the subscript (l) for H2O which was obviously just in liquid form.

I wrote: measure 100mL of water and then some equation but left out the (l) subscript lol. Good thing it was the only chem class I needed.

Yeah, my TA speaks english, but the rest is pretty much the same. THough i have noticed that outside of grading the TA is nice, but while grading they are assholes!!!

-Kevin

 

[Heisenberg]

I hated the year of university chemistry I had to take with a passion. The labs were long and tedious, and the write-ups we had to do took forever.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: Heisenberg
I hated the year of university chemistry I had to take with a passion. The labs were long and tedious, and the write-ups we had to do took forever.

Exactly. Im not angry because it is hard or anything, im angry because they consist of two things:

1. Measuring some part of the object (Volume, Mass)
2. Measuring some part of the object after heating.

Then you jam those two together in a million different ways and you have a new experiment. Just the length and the tediousness get you down. Then to see that you are doing poorly on the reports because of some TA's seriously flawed grading scale just kills ya more!

-Kevin

 

[ColdFusion718]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek

Originally posted by: ColdFusion718
I totally feel you on it. With these large, weed-out classes, these are some of the things they do to filter out the masses who won't make it later on.

When I took intro to chem at a university, they had a guy who barely spoke English. My lab TA (the head TA) was a total prick.

He never gave anyone a perfect on their lab. I actually came close--he deducted 1 point for the 3 times I forgot to put the subscript (l) for H2O which was obviously just in liquid form.

I wrote: measure 100mL of water and then some equation but left out the (l) subscript lol. Good thing it was the only chem class I needed.

Yeah, my TA speaks english, but the rest is pretty much the same. THough i have noticed that outside of grading the TA is nice, but while grading they are assholes!!!

-Kevin

Speaking of which, on the final lab, it involved using this corrosive solution (I can't remember exactly, this was 6 years ago). Now this TA constantly tells us not to put our backpacks on the extra chairs near our stations. I don't know why he was such a prick about it. On the last lab, he put his book bag on a stool near my station.

Guess what I did? I poured that liquid all over it when he left the room then I "accidentally" bumped into it while walking past it. When he came back, he was like WTF HAPPENED TO MY BAG?

I said, "I think it fell." No one ratted me out because we all hated him.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Haha nice! Yeah ill bet he learns to heed his own advice (at least you hope so)

-Kevin

 

[Slammy1]

Well, real world reports are more involved but in a better way. What killed me about chem labs was the people were looking for somewhat random things, it doesn't help you in the real world. Instrumental analysis was the worst. Yes, I could expound on any number of irrelevant factors in the experiment, but it's just plain meaningless. In the real world you'd be looking at 1 page write ups; most of the time is spent designing and running experiments. Sure, you end up with some very long reports (one study was 125-pager) but it's all relevant and covers subtleties; not regurgatation of commonly known facts. While the techniques you learn are important (mostly), write ups are geared towards people going to grad school (don't get me started about the ignorance of those reports) rather than working in the real world. People come out of school with no idea on what's relevant to include in a report, organization is haphazard. I've been published and written any number of reports for industry, it's probably a strength, I almost dropped out of chemistry cause the lab reports were so dumb and professors would argue that it was supposed to help once you get a job. Surprise, they didn't know what they were talking about.

I always use this example when describing what not to include. Let's say everytime you record data you also include lab temperature. Can it influence experiments? Sure, but unless it's critical data regulatory reviewers will see that and ask what's the influence. If you don't record it everytime, even if it's essentially meaningless in a controlled temperature environment of a chemistry lab, they have a problem with it. If everyone's not recording it, you have to justify that. A statement I often make is don't ask the question if you don't want to know the answer. Include what is necessary to run the experiment, only draw the conclusions necessary and valid from the experiment. College chemistry is mental masturbation; you have to retrain people once they hit industry. It's really sad, and I knew they were doing it cause I was working as a chemist while going to school.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Tiamat

Originally posted by: isekii
Not sure what your major is, but wait till you hit Organic Chemistry.

You'll wish you were back in Gen Chem

QFT O chem sucks. More worse is quantitative o chem. You get to keep redoing the lab until you obtain the correct amount of product.

Oh joy, is that a section of O Chem that I have yet to go through? Or is it another class than your standard Ochem 30X classes?

 

[DrPizza]

Nothing in the world sucked more than organic chemistry when I took it... At the beginning of the course, there were about 35 students in my class - 16 seniors who were pre-med, 8 seniors who were chem majors, 10 grad students, and me, the freshman.

I think I had the hardest professor on earth for that class as well... wrote his own text, supposedly was one of the best organic chemists in the nation. Here's a sample test question:

"Instructions: Assume you are on a deserted island with ample vineyards. Fortunately for you, a life raft full of equipment and any reagent you could ever ask for floats up to shore. Starting with ethyl alcohol that you obtain from fermenting the grapes, synthesize each of the following compounds.

#1. Synthesize the chemical that killed several thousand people in Bhopal India when an accident released it from the Union Carbide plant earlier this week."

(I didn't have a clue that something even happened. Of course, I got the question wrong; I didn't have a clue what the chemical was. To this day, I recall: methyl isocyanate. Relatively simple question too, hence it was #1. (This was o-chem I)

Labs were equally fun; you never knew what was going to happen. This was in the days before all those nice vents, etc. Everyone knocked themselves out or nearly knocked themselves out while using ether, at least once. Prof just sat in the front of the room, with a dry grin on his face. When you saw that expression, you looked to see if you were doing something wrong, and prayed it wasn't you, because he WOULD let you screw up, with one exception: if you EVER had a flame near ether, you failed the lab and course immediately.

A major component of the lab grade was based on the percent yield, vs. the theoretical maximum yield if everything was perfect. You never knew exactly what this was, because until you had your product, sometimes you didn't know what you started with. i.e. nitration of an unknown toluene. IIRC, and this was 22 years ago, I started with bromo-toluene. The poor guy across the lab bench from me had nitro-toluene. His main product was supposed to be 1,3-dinitrotoluene. And, of course, he was distilling every last drop he could, in order to maximize his yield. Well, he didn't know what he had at that point. But, unfortunately, one of the by-products just happens to be 1,3,5 trinitrotoluene, popularly known as... TNT. Yeah, heat and TNT don't go together too well. FOOOOOOOM!!!!! Glass stopper ricochets off the ceiling and goes crashing across the room. Everyone's diving for cover. Prof doesn't even flinch... saw it coming, and is still sitting there with that ******-eating dry sense of humor grin he had. AWESOME teacher though. Let you learn from your mistakes. (Yeah, never stick something in the oven to dehydrate it, if there's a chance that a potential product sublimates. Oooops!) And, I still remember how to make plastic explosives. I've kept my course manuals for 20+ years... All sorts of fun stuff in there...

 

[Xyo II]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
Nothing in the world sucked more than organic chemistry when I took it... At the beginning of the course, there were about 35 students in my class - 16 seniors who were pre-med, 8 seniors who were chem majors, 10 grad students, and me, the freshman.

I think I had the hardest professor on earth for that class as well... wrote his own text, supposedly was one of the best organic chemists in the nation. Here's a sample test question:

"Instructions: Assume you are on a deserted island with ample vineyards. Fortunately for you, a life raft full of equipment and any reagent you could ever ask for floats up to shore. Starting with ethyl alcohol that you obtain from fermenting the grapes, synthesize each of the following compounds.

#1. Synthesize the chemical that killed several thousand people in Bhopal India when an accident released it from the Union Carbide plant earlier this week."

(I didn't have a clue that something even happened. Of course, I got the question wrong; I didn't have a clue what the chemical was. To this day, I recall: methyl isocyanate. Relatively simple question too, hence it was #1. (This was o-chem I)

Labs were equally fun; you never knew what was going to happen. This was in the days before all those nice vents, etc. Everyone knocked themselves out or nearly knocked themselves out while using ether, at least once. Prof just sat in the front of the room, with a dry grin on his face. When you saw that expression, you looked to see if you were doing something wrong, and prayed it wasn't you, because he WOULD let you screw up, with one exception: if you EVER had a flame near ether, you failed the lab and course immediately.

A major component of the lab grade was based on the percent yield, vs. the theoretical maximum yield if everything was perfect. You never knew exactly what this was, because until you had your product, sometimes you didn't know what you started with. i.e. nitration of an unknown toluene. IIRC, and this was 22 years ago, I started with bromo-toluene. The poor guy across the lab bench from me had nitro-toluene. His main product was supposed to be 1,3-dinitrotoluene. And, of course, he was distilling every last drop he could, in order to maximize his yield. Well, he didn't know what he had at that point. But, unfortunately, one of the by-products just happens to be 1,3,5 trinitrotoluene, popularly known as... TNT. Yeah, heat and TNT don't go together too well. FOOOOOOOM!!!!! Glass stopper ricochets off the ceiling and goes crashing across the room. Everyone's diving for cover. Prof doesn't even flinch... saw it coming, and is still sitting there with that ******-eating dry sense of humor grin he had. AWESOME teacher though. Let you learn from your mistakes. (Yeah, never stick something in the oven to dehydrate it, if there's a chance that a potential product sublimates. Oooops!) And, I still remember how to make plastic explosives. I've kept my course manuals for 20+ years... All sorts of fun stuff in there...

:laugh: That's great. But that's really cruel of the prof if he saw it coming, someone could have gotten a piece of glass in the eye. But, I'm guessing it was a great lesson to learn from.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Hey guys i just checked my grades in the class. On avg they are about 4 points higher than the class average. However the class avg on most of the assignments hovers around 66%. What should i do? Obviously this TA isn't grading something right, or is grading too harshly. Will the grades curve at the end seeing as the entire class has a D right now?

-Kevin

 

[Brentx]

They might curve. You should ask your TA. With a class average that low I would assume that they would.

I'm lucky, I never have to take College Chem. I got a 4 on the AP Chem test, and that got me out of a Semester of any science class with a lab at UW Milwaukee. So, I will be taking Astronomy and be done with science forever .

If your complaining now wait until you start doing Equilibrium, or Acid-Base titrations, or *shivers* kinetics. I hated Kinetics with a passion, especially all the rate order ****** that comes along with it.

 

[SOSTrooper]

Ummmm maybe I'm one of the few, but I liked o-chem and biochemistry I dunno why people hate ochem so much, I thought it was a really fun class and something different to learn. I had to write lab reports too for my labs, but after writing them for a while I just got used to it and know what to write to get the grade I want. But of course its up to what your professor wants.

 

[rocadelpunk]

lmao welcome to college.

You'll learn *the system* soon enough

 

[miniMUNCH]

Originally posted by: Slammy1
Well, real world reports are more involved but in a better way. What killed me about chem labs was the people were looking for somewhat random things, it doesn't help you in the real world. Instrumental analysis was the worst. Yes, I could expound on any number of irrelevant factors in the experiment, but it's just plain meaningless. In the real world you'd be looking at 1 page write ups; most of the time is spent designing and running experiments. Sure, you end up with some very long reports (one study was 125-pager) but it's all relevant and covers subtleties; not regurgatation of commonly known facts. While the techniques you learn are important (mostly), write ups are geared towards people going to grad school (don't get me started about the ignorance of those reports) rather than working in the real world. People come out of school with no idea on what's relevant to include in a report, organization is haphazard. I've been published and written any number of reports for industry, it's probably a strength, I almost dropped out of chemistry cause the lab reports were so dumb and professors would argue that it was supposed to help once you get a job. Surprise, they didn't know what they were talking about.

I always use this example when describing what not to include. Let's say everytime you record data you also include lab temperature. Can it influence experiments? Sure, but unless it's critical data regulatory reviewers will see that and ask what's the influence. If you don't record it everytime, even if it's essentially meaningless in a controlled temperature environment of a chemistry lab, they have a problem with it. If everyone's not recording it, you have to justify that. A statement I often make is don't ask the question if you don't want to know the answer. Include what is necessary to run the experiment, only draw the conclusions necessary and valid from the experiment. College chemistry is mental masturbation; you have to retrain people once they hit industry. It's really sad, and I knew they were doing it cause I was working as a chemist while going to school.

I track with you a little bit but I have to disagree on some points.

Mainly...Don't ask the question if you don't want to know the answer?! Sounds like you work in the pharma/biotech industry.

Rabbit trail starts here...

I worked in the pharma industry for 5 years, decided to bail on a great job, some good stock options and go to grad school (chemical engineering).

Why? One word: Vioxx. Okay, so it is not a word... it is a trade name...whatever.

Point is...Vioxx exposes everything that is wrong with the pharmaceutical industry. Faulty and incomplete science and engineering. I worked control system engineering, process R&D, regulatory, and maintenance in my time in pharma. All practices are more or less fvcked up and/or 20+ year old science.

Rabbit trail ends...

Conclusion: There is value in learning to properly design, perform and analyze experiments.

 

[yhelothar]

Yup, this is how my chem professor is like also. They have this subjective list of things that they expect from you. Like what's important to state on the report, or what's not important, etc.. It all boils down to the discretion of the professor. So unless you think like him/her, you'll lose massive amounts of points. The best thing you could do is to talk to your professor during office hours and have him explain what he's looking for.

 

[fire400]

Originally posted by: isekii
Not sure what your major is, but wait till you hit Organic Chemistry.

You'll wish you were back in Gen Chem

ROFL

I know man.... just looking through those books, you don't even want to move up the branch of chemistry studies; depending on the layout of classes, you are either:

-going to write massive papers about things that don't make sense at first
-equations that take up pages, even with small handwriting
-or you are going to do labs that make you wish you could take high school all over again just to pass the class

p.s. if you're whining about the work, you are in for it man, hahahaha

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: fire400

Originally posted by: isekii
Not sure what your major is, but wait till you hit Organic Chemistry.

You'll wish you were back in Gen Chem

ROFL

I know man.... just looking through those books, you don't even want to move up the branch of chemistry studies; depending on the layout of classes, you are either:

-going to write massive papers about things that don't make sense at first
-equations that take up pages, even with small handwriting
-or you are going to do labs that make you wish you could take high school all over again just to pass the class

p.s. if you're whining about the work, you are in for it man, hahahaha

He's not really whining about the work. He's complaining how ridiculously illogical the grading is. It's one thing to do a lot of work... and be graded reasonably and fairly on it, and it's another thing to do a regular amount of work, but be docked off massive amounts of points for every little insignificant thing that shows nothing about how well you conducted the experiment/learned from the lab assignment.
The fact is.. the grading is often very arbitrary and is rarely based on merit, but rather on insignificant detail.

 

[ebaycj]

doing what you are supposed to do in chem lab isn't fun, but there are so many unauthorized experiments that can be oh-so-fun (and illegally profitable !).

 

[Midlander]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
Nothing in the world sucked more than organic chemistry when I took it... At the beginning of the course, there were about 35 students in my class - 16 seniors who were pre-med, 8 seniors who were chem majors, 10 grad students, and me, the freshman.

I think I had the hardest professor on earth for that class as well... wrote his own text, supposedly was one of the best organic chemists in the nation. Here's a sample test question:

"Instructions: Assume you are on a deserted island with ample vineyards. Fortunately for you, a life raft full of equipment and any reagent you could ever ask for floats up to shore. Starting with ethyl alcohol that you obtain from fermenting the grapes, synthesize each of the following compounds.

#1. Synthesize the chemical that killed several thousand people in Bhopal India when an accident released it from the Union Carbide plant earlier this week."

(I didn't have a clue that something even happened. Of course, I got the question wrong; I didn't have a clue what the chemical was. To this day, I recall: methyl isocyanate. Relatively simple question too, hence it was #1. (This was o-chem I)

Labs were equally fun; you never knew what was going to happen. This was in the days before all those nice vents, etc. Everyone knocked themselves out or nearly knocked themselves out while using ether, at least once. Prof just sat in the front of the room, with a dry grin on his face. When you saw that expression, you looked to see if you were doing something wrong, and prayed it wasn't you, because he WOULD let you screw up, with one exception: if you EVER had a flame near ether, you failed the lab and course immediately.

A major component of the lab grade was based on the percent yield, vs. the theoretical maximum yield if everything was perfect. You never knew exactly what this was, because until you had your product, sometimes you didn't know what you started with. i.e. nitration of an unknown toluene. IIRC, and this was 22 years ago, I started with bromo-toluene. The poor guy across the lab bench from me had nitro-toluene. His main product was supposed to be 1,3-dinitrotoluene. And, of course, he was distilling every last drop he could, in order to maximize his yield. Well, he didn't know what he had at that point. But, unfortunately, one of the by-products just happens to be 1,3,5 trinitrotoluene, popularly known as... TNT. Yeah, heat and TNT don't go together too well. FOOOOOOOM!!!!! Glass stopper ricochets off the ceiling and goes crashing across the room. Everyone's diving for cover. Prof doesn't even flinch... saw it coming, and is still sitting there with that ******-eating dry sense of humor grin he had. AWESOME teacher though. Let you learn from your mistakes. (Yeah, never stick something in the oven to dehydrate it, if there's a chance that a potential product sublimates. Oooops!) And, I still remember how to make plastic explosives. I've kept my course manuals for 20+ years... All sorts of fun stuff in there...

Shens.

Organic chemistry is a sophomore class for Chem majors and pre-med students. No grad students will be taking it, since they already took and passed it as an undergrad.

Of course, if this was all satire, then :thumbsup:

 

[Slammy1]

Originally posted by: miniMUNCH

I track with you a little bit but I have to disagree on some points.

Mainly...Don't ask the question if you don't want to know the answer?! Sounds like you work in the pharma/biotech industry.

Rabbit trail starts here...

I worked in the pharma industry for 5 years, decided to bail on a great job, some good stock options and go to grad school (chemical engineering).

Why? One word: Vioxx. Okay, so it is not a word... it is a trade name...whatever.

Point is...Vioxx exposes everything that is wrong with the pharmaceutical industry. Faulty and incomplete science and engineering. I worked control system engineering, process R&D, regulatory, and maintenance in my time in pharma. All practices are more or less fvcked up and/or 20+ year old science.

Rabbit trail ends...

Conclusion: There is value in learning to properly design, perform and analyze experiments.

I'm not saying the labs are bad, just the reports for profs that don't have industrial experience throwing in requirements for apparantly random elements.

20 years ago the industrial requirements were quite a bit different, and it's the nature of industry to only do what is necessary. When I say don't ask the question what I mean is don't open yourself to regulatory scrutiny unless there's a reason for it, which unfortunately creates an atmosphere of paranoia in the industry. It's a challenge in the industry to design programs that will hold for 20 years down the road, choosing technology that, even if it improves will allow a crossover to the new tech. I actually gave a seminar on that very topic wrt CMC submissions.

I think a lot of your probs in the industry go back to regulatory problems. I always say it's not the best and brightest that go into that side of things due to big differences in pay, which is unfortunate that the ones trying to hide the issues are likely smarter than the ones that are trying to find them. A lot of generic industries are "no smoke, no fire" companies that are more concerned with having reports double spaced in a Times New Roman font than actual report content. It's a hard industry to maintain integrity in when the people that get ahead are the ones that find ways to get things released rather than find ways to produce better product.

I suppose all subsets of chemistry are prone to these sorts of untruths as it's easy enough to doctor experiments to prove whatever point your trying to make (for example, change the weight of your analyte to make your assay results appear to be passing).

I know any number of PhDs that couldn't design a rational approach to a problem to save their lives (they're the ones that steal your patents and take credit for your original work). Grad school allows doesn't really prepare you to produce meaningful work, either you can do it or not and, unfortunately, it's often about understanding a professors view of chemistry rather than what's truly the principle. Especially in the non-mathematical sub fields you have people that make it through based on sweat and rote memorization, not real understanding of the principles. There are good PhDs and bad PhDs, unfortunately the educational system we have in place produces at least an equal number of the later to the former.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Let another 67% roll in!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is absolutely ridiculous. I followed the instructions to the T and never once did it mention the stuff she has written on this one:

Apparently, I didn't define all the terms (Yet there are only two and they definitely have definitions next to them from the book). That is -5.
Despite that the book says to use the table on this page, for the experimental data table, apparently that is wrong and im not supposed to have one of the columns. -5.
Although the book does not ANYWHERE list the need for a table in results and conclusions apparently she had different ideas. -8.
And finally to top this whole damn thing off: INCORRECT CALCULATIONS!!!!! I copied the equation from the book and got the exact same number she did!!! EXACT SAME!!! Yet her equation went about it differently so i get another -5!!!!!
Then on the next page i have a minor error that the Stoichiometric Coefficient definition isn't good enough for her...thats right, the definition out of the book is not good enough: -1.

Then on the pre-lab questions this is a real joke. I forgot to, IN MY CALCULATIONS, write a subscript 2 for Na(2)SO(4)....-2.
Then I dont have a clue why but i got -1 for the result. No explanation, all work is shown, but there is a nice -1 sitting next to it (Yes it is the right answer).
On the reverse side I didn't answer a question..-2 acceptable. I didn't know how to do it so i gave up.
The next questions i answered fully and correctly yet i have -2 written next to them with no explanation!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a joke. The class average was a 72; I received a 67.

Guys what do i do? I am follow the instructions, i am explaining needless amounts of information and yet im getting counted off for apparently nothing at all!!

-Kevin

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Midlander

Shens.

Organic chemistry is a sophomore class for Chem majors and pre-med students. No grad students will be taking it, since they already took and passed it as an undergrad.

Of course, if this was all satire, then :thumbsup:

Alfred University, 1984-1985
Chem 451 and Chem 452. 400 level classes denotes senior level class; grad students are allowed in senior level classes.

edit: and after 3 1/2 years of ceramic engineering (which meant courses in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, tons of physics, mechanics of materials, etc.), and then a major in mathematics, and a minor in computer science, masters in technology in education, and working on a masters in physics, that organic chemistry class was by far the hardest I had ever taken. I've seen friends textbooks that they used at other schools... far far less rigorous than what we had.

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: James3shin
hahah gen chem...are you a chem major by chance? If so, wait till you get to Physical Chemistry Lab, now that's "FUN." 18 page reports on the regular, with 12 of those pages being strictly calculations...once again "AWESOME"!!! Then there is the lecture, now that's "UBERFVCKING TASTIC" especially when you get into quantum mechanics.!!!

I liked Pchem lab...sure, the reports were long, but the experiments were interesting. You actually felt you were doing something technical.

Originally posted by: DrPizza
I think I had the hardest professor on earth for that class as well... wrote his own text, supposedly was one of the best organic chemists in the nation. Here's a sample test question:

"Instructions: Assume you are on a deserted island with ample vineyards. Fortunately for you, a life raft full of equipment and any reagent you could ever ask for floats up to shore. Starting with ethyl alcohol that you obtain from fermenting the grapes, synthesize each of the following compounds.

#1. Synthesize the chemical that killed several thousand people in Bhopal India when an accident released it from the Union Carbide plant earlier this week."

I had a prof just like that for physical chemistry. Sheer genius, but his tests SUCKED and he simply would not fully explain stuff. The average was usually in the 30's, and this was a high-level class filled with a bunch of smart people. He expected no less than perfection. He'd fill up all 11 blackboards during the lecture and have to start erasing stuff for more space...and yes, you were supposed to copy all that down and KNOW it for the test. If you had a question, it was because you were stupid not to get it the first time.