CHEM 2311

The class itself is not bad at all. We only met every other week and the experiments were pretty straightforward. But the grading sucked. Postlabs were a majority of the grade but I got off so many points for really simple things like sigfigs. The postlabs also asked about things we had never learned about, so they were sometimes hard. Quizzes, prelabs, notebooks, and participation were easy 100s. There was a final at the end of the class which my TA said would be almost exactly like the practice exam provided. It was not. The final was pretty hard and it was what tanked my grade at the end of the semester. I still cannot believe we had a final for a one-credit lab. One thing that was nice was that an 88% was an A-. Overall, the experiments were fun and self-explanatory, but the grading scale was not it and the class was a bit more work outside of class than a one-credit class should be. Most of you are probably taking the class because it is required for a major or pre-med track. You'll be fine, but maybe make sure to have friends in the class to ask questions.

#tCFF23

This course can get unnecessarily hard at times. The grading in this class is way different than gen chem and I underestimated that. The class had 5 labs. Each lab had a pre-lab, quiz, and postlab attached to it. The grade totals like this: quizzes - 10%, prefab -10%, post labs -50%, lab notebook - 5%, participation- 10%, and final exam 15%. You can get easy points from the quiz, participation, and notebook sections. As long as you attend labs and do the procedure, you have participation points. If you come into the lab with you notebook done and write down all necessary data, you can get all those points. You will need these easy points because the other 3 categories are more difficult.
As I said, the grading in this class is down to a precision. They follow Chruma's grading exactly and this made me frustrated at times because I was not used to it. I recommend attending the office hours of your TA's or meeting with Chruma for prelabs and postlabs. I felt at times the questions being asked weren't taught in the lecture and made it hard to complete the tasks.
In my opinion, the final was hard. Our year was the first time that the final was being done in person and what I expected was not what we got. We were told the final would look like the practice exam, but in my opinion, the actual exam asked more concise questions and wanted more concise answers. I still say to review the practice final given and go over conceptual questions on the post labs and quizzes.
I think my main advice is to go to office hours. Your TAs and Chruma can help you with any assignment and this was something I did not take advantage of. #tCFF23

This course was unnecessarily stressful and difficult. Professor Chruma does not know how to be a professor, or a kind person. For the semester, there are pre-lab assignments which are usually short, a lab notebook due before you leave lab, and post-lab assignments which are incredibly long and hard. Chruma is VERY specific about his grading so make sure to pay attention in the introduction lecture when he talks about it. Chruma is not helpful so I wouldn't even bother asking him questions, and he does not tolerate lateness other than his syllabus late policy (i think it was 15 minutes late). you have no lab group, so you do the whole lab yourself and most of the time it takes almost the entire 3 hours. It's a bi-weekly lab, so doing bad on 1 assignment can mess up your grade tremendously. I did not enjoy Chruma and found this lab to be incredibly pointless. I did not learn anything and it never matches up with the Orgo 1 lecture.

Orgo lab is WAY easier than gen chem lab. You only meet every other week (just 5 labs total), there are no lengthy essays/lab reports, and you get to do your experiments by yourself so you don't have to rely on group members. Your experience will definitely depend on your TA (mine hated organic chemistry so she kinda took that out on us), but as long as you are diligent about getting the prelabs and postlabs correct then you'll get most of the points. Make sure to go back and look at the grades on your prelabs and postlabs, because grading rubrics are posted after the deadline and a lot of the time you'll see that your TA didn't change the auto-graded answers to accommodate for rounding differences like they were supposed to. There is a final exam for this class but even though it's closed notes and in-person it wasn't that bad because you get a practice exam that's pretty similar to the format of the final (make sure to review all the postlab questions too)!! #tCFF23

This class was more organized and probably less work than the general chemistry labs, but it is a little harder since you do not have a lab partner/group and there are stricter grading guidelines. I asked my TA a lot of questions in lab and attended office hours if needed to ensure I was doing the labs/post-labs correct and maximize my points to stay in the A range. I guess it's cool to see how organic chemistry can be useful (after the lecture sucks the life out of you lol). There is a final too which wasn't too hard either but it is necessary to understand the content from the semester to do well.

#tCFfall22

I got an A in this class, but it was a lot of unnecessary work. It was also such a dreadful class. The format of the course is 5 labs for the semester. Outside of the lab, there was a video to complete (~45 minutes), pre-lab assignments, pre-lab quizzes, and post-lab assignments. This course does have an online, open-note final at the end too.

My Advice:
1) Take the pre-lab preparations advice to heart. My TA used Chruma's grading exactly and that made grading VERY frustrating. For example, if you forgot to put a space between a number and the degrees symbol... you'd get points off. So to avoid this READ THE TIPS PROVIDED AND FOLLOW THEM.
2) For the final: go to the review session hosted by your TA and do the final practice exam and you'll do fine (Truthfully, it is not hard and you'll probably need to spend your time studying for the lecture anyway)

This was such a chill lab, Chruma was a nice guy and asked for nothing unreasonable of you. As with any lab it depends heavily on who you have for your TA, but it feels like most of the chem TAs are pretty chill. There were no groups in this lab, it was all individual and honestly, I kind of preferred it that way. Labs are set to run for 3 hours but if you're efficient with your time you can get out in like 1.5 hours. Really fun lab and a great professor!

#tCFfall22

Compared to general chemistry's labs, I found lab to be extremely straightforward this semester. We had to write little to no lab reports, as most of the prelab/postlab assignments are free-response based on assigned readings/recorded lectures or data analysis. Whether or not you should do the readings-- I personally did for most of them, which sometimes came up in prelab quizzes/assignments. I can't say for sure how helpful they were, but I'd say to at least skim them. The recorded lectures were helpful though, and I took notes on them when I could. On average, each experiment's video would be around an hour or so, sometimes 30-40 minutes.

Labs are scheduled for 3 hours each week, but we typically only had in-person labs every other week (i.e. we would get one week off in between experiments) and labs would go for maybe 1.5 hours if you worked efficiently in lab. I personally had an amazing TA (shoutout to Eric D.), which made conducting experiments and graded assignments very fair. One big difference from gen chem labs is that you will not have a lab partner nor group, but I found asking my TA all of my questions to more than makeup for it.

At least for this semester, there was a scheduled final exam. I would say that it was pretty fair for a final, but also quite specific. Just make sure you understand the procedures and concepts from the semester in good detail. #tCFfall2021

This review is more for the course than the instructor since I think most students had very little direct interaction/instruction from Professor Chruma. I think the course was organized well, and the workload was fair for a one-credit course. There were a total of 5 experiments. Before lab each week, we had to watch a lecture video made by Chruma, do a 1-2 page pre-lab assignment, and take a really easy 5-question pre-lab quiz. In-lab was fine although sometimes it felt like there was a bit of a time-crunch. I recommend finding a friend/partner that you can ask questions and take turns getting/washing equipment and glassware with. We only went into lab every other week. On the weeks where we don't go into the lab, we work on and turn in the post-lab assignments that were longer and harder than the pre-labs. I was fortunate to get a nice and helpful TA which I think made a big difference since the TAs are the ones directly watching you in the lab and grading the stuff you turn in.

I took this course online during COVID so keep that in mind when reading this review. I didn't interact with Professor Chruma at all, so I don't know what kind of professor/lecturer he is, but he appears like a decent guy. Orgo I lab was so difficult and stressful for no reason. We had 10 minutes to do a 5-question prelab quiz based on the beyond labs videos (pretty easy). I didn't read a single word from the textbook and still did well in the class (I got an A-). The labs were honestly pretty boring. We had some prelab questions, in-lab questions based on the experiment and then some postlab/conceptual questions after the lab. We were given 2 weeks to complete and submit the labs which were usually around 6-7 page word documents. I recommend not leaving them to do for the last minute and posting your questions on Piazza or asking your TAs during OHs. I don't know how it'll be for in-person classes, but for us, we had to watch several lecture videos of the TAs doing the experiment. I recommend studying the basic calculation questions (percent yield, ratios, etc) for the final exam and definitely looking over the lecture slides he uses for the prelab quizzes as well. They never asked specific questions from the actual experiments themselves on the final, so don't worry about that. We had to do beyond labs worksheet since we were online, but I doubt you'll have to deal with those when you're in-person. There were 5 experiments in total. Good luck :)

This course was unnecessarily annoying and stressful. Chruma did not know how to teach an online course at all. The videos for each experiment are recorded and posted online, but they difficult to follow and make out what's going on. I would have to squint at my screen for about 10 minutes every week just to find out when the product was melting. The assignments were alright, but if you were in the first week of lab you were given basically no help on them. The second week lucked out because the first week asked all their questions on Piazza. Multiple TAs often did not know what was going on in the course, and said Chruma was not teaching well, and I agree completely with them. This class was very poorly structured, and although Chruma claims he will adjust for future semesters, I doubt he'll actually do anything good. He seemed to put this course on the back burner for the entire semester and focus more on the in-person lab. This class caused more stress than actual orgo lecture, so I do not recommend taking unless you have to.