CHEM 1410

I liked Columbus for her character as she is extremely flexible and understanding with her students. The exams were all take home until the final which was great because we could use notes, however, many people claimed to feel unprepared for the closed-book, in-class final. As a result, the individual portion of the exams are closed-book and in class in CHEM 1420. As far as the learning style goes, the structure of the class involves a once a week lecture, an expo where you do top hat with your group-mates, and top hat homework online that is due throughout days of the week. Top-hat is kinda annoying because it grades your answer to stuff you just learned buy yourself for accuracy. Other than that the class was do-able, make sure you do top hat and use your friends as resources when you need help because the TA's are not super helpful and the professors are not available as often.

First things first, TopHat, for the most part, is not your friend. Moving on: I thought Columbus was a decent professor. She knew what she was she was talking about and was willing to help students. My main issue is that she often goes of tangents and tends to get off topic from time to time. Just make sure to do the readings and understand them ahead of time or you'll feel lost the entire time.

I took this class with Columbus because she was the highest ranked professor but I honestly do not understand why. She laughs at answer choices and does not explain content well. I listened to one of Welchs lectures and I wish i took with him instead. Do not recommend Columbus

This review may not be super applicable to people taking this class in the future, as I took it during COVID and had a much different experience than normal. And if I'm being honest, I think a lot of the issues I had with the course were due to my own lack of motivation to study and put the work in. That being said, I would not call Columbus the best teacher in the world. Her lectures were pretty good (though again with COVID the lecture videos just alternated between all the professors so I didn't have her for the whole semester technically), but she does take forever to grade stuff, which is irritating.
As a lot of other people have said on these reviews, TopHat pretty much sucks. It is often not super clear and sometimes doesn't cover all the topics that you need to know to complete the Expo assignments.
But if you are willing to put in the effort, study for the exams, and take some time to do some independent learning and research for when TopHat doesn't suffice, you'll be just fine.

Note: I took this course Fall 2020 so my experience may differ from how the course is in a "normal" semester

So given that the entire course was virtual, it didn't really feel like Columbus was my professor? Pre-recorded video lectures were released weekly (on Sundays usually), and each of the professors teaching this course took turns doing these videos. So I only got "lectures" from Columbus like 3-ish times this semester. On Tuesdays, she would be on Microsoft Teams and go over the material from TopHat, lecture videos, and answer student questions. Overall, I felt like she was good at explaining concepts and was helpful during those Tuesday sessions and office hours.

The exams came in three parts (more like 2.5 tbh). First part is done individually and was pretty easy given that it was all open-book. Second part is just a few questions that are more complex and because they weren't timed, I ended up spending a lot of time on this part. Third part is the same questions as the second part except this time you did with your assigned group.

In summary, this class was a moderate amount of work. Sometimes concepts were confusing, but they're easily clarified by just going to office hours or asking your friends/group members. I haven't looked at chemistry since 10th grade, and I managed to do well and learn a lot in this course.

#tCF2020

My friends and I nicknamed her "Lazy Linda". Her grading is unfair and your score on assignments and exams are arbitrarily dependent on the TAs. When students ask her questions during class she laughs and struggles to find a way to poorly answer the question. Do yourself a favor and choose a different professor - I recommend Welch. The assignments and textbook are on a website called TopHat where there are sometimes typos, errors, and misinformation. The class is not super difficult, however, all of the learning is up to you - you must teach yourself by reading the TopHat and I suggest using other supplementary websites, like ChemLibre, if you do not fully understand a concept.

the hardest class I had this semester, I get lots of stress from it and had a mental breakdown at the beginning. It should be basic, but it's very confusing. There are some concepts that you can't understand clearly without background knowledge in chemistry, but there are also concepts that are different from high school chemistry so you have to forget some of what you learned already. I put most of my effort into this class but got the lowest score comparing to other classes. Lecture videos most of the time are not very helpful for me in explanation of video quiz questions (some are), I have to depend on tophat, which is terrible because it doesn't explain knowledge in good sequence. For example, it mentions a term you don't know at the beginning once, bewilderingly, then talks about the meaning at the end. I made a lot of notes for open book exams, which I think ask the harder questions than those from homework or quiz. Plus Part 2 is a strike for someone who's not very good at English reading (international students be aware), I usually get almost perfect on part 1 then lose more than half of the points on part 2.
I don't know much about Columbus, since instructors teach together this semester. I know she's been through a hard time. Though I don't know if it's my problem, when I go to her office hour, she answers other people's question of more than 5 minutes explaining lots of things that are more than what student asks, but when it's my turn, she was quick and it only took half a minute?
Advise: ask TA for help, they provide you answer to question that you probably can't find in textbook or lecture video.

IF YOU'RE AN INCOMING 1ST YEAR READ THIS: this class is hard and will not be like your high school chem class. You need to work ahead, you need to do practice problems, you need to know every inch of the content for exams, and you will not be able wing-it and get a good grade even if you're super "gifted." Its not impossible to do well but the amount of effort you put in is going to be what determines your grade in this class, you'll be putting in a majority of work yourself, not much help comes from the professors in my opinion. That being said: do not let the difficulty push you away from pre-med and other things, you have so many other classes and years, you don't need an A in this to get into med school, dont let it scare you!

To preface: I received an A- in this course and I am a fairly lazy student, thus for all my lazy students out there, this is for you. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this course-- warning, the first unit and the Final Exam are the hardest parts of this course. The first unit discusses quantum theory, if I recall, which is misleading because you believe that you will be discussing Chemistry, not Physics-- but I digress. Your exam grades are broken up into 3 portions: individual, individual group, and group. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A GOOD GROUP. If you do not have a good group, request to change your group IMMEDIATELY. For the first exam, your group portion is 70 percent of your overall grade. In my experience, I had a terrible group that would not listen to me and insisted upon choosing the wrong answer, I got an 80 overall because my first and second parts were nearly perfect. The second exam, I accidentally didn't wake up, and I was able to get a 95 overall because I had to make up the test with a different group. Afterwards, I emailed my TA and asked to change my group and listed my grievances. Guys, it is every person for themselves, don't carry a group that puts minimal amounts of effort. TopHat was not that bad, I learned everything I needed to through reading TopHat and watching MIT videos. I did not watch lecture recordings for doing my video quizzes because they sucked; you can get all your answers from the reading. Overall, class was pretty easy, final exam was extremely hard though. Study for the final exam by going through every unit. Do not think that it is "like the first part of the exam" like they always say-- frankly, it isn't. Many people failed. Do what I say and literally go to review sessions and read through one unit each day, its not that complicated. Good luck!

If you have Linda Columbus, good luck. Kevin Welch is objectively better in every possible way. If you can't get Welch, don't bother going to lecture, just ask a friend in Welch's class to send you the recorded Welch Lecture. Columbus in lecture will spend all of class on one problem and then realize she did it wrong. Welch will make study guides for the exams and extra review that Columbus simply doesn't provide. Try to get these materials from a friend as they are usually helpful.
The class isn't impossible but its annoying especially if you are only in it because its an e-school req and it doesn't actually have anything to do with your major. The "textbook" readings are bad and it's not a real textbook (it's written by the professors). It's hard to find other materials online that match (the organic chemistry tutor on youtube is ok sometimes).