CHEM 1411

This class seemed like a lot of work for a one credit class, although it wasn't necessarily hard. I was able to do it no problem without being in the lecture with the help of the with the prelab content and workshops. My TA took weeks to grade the assignments though, which is frustrating if you have to redo an assignment. In the labs itself, it seemed like nobody knew what was going on because directions are so vague. Also, Microsoft Teams, the platform used for all the material, is extremely user unfriendly. Overall, this class is not bad at all, just annoying. #tCFfall2021

The grading system for this lab is so confusing at first, that they showed us a whole video explaining it. Once you figure it out though it makes sense and is manageable. You will have a lot of work in this class. You are expected to write your own experimental plans with a group, do 2 presentations, write summaries for each experiment, and do pre-labs and post-labs for each experiment. This combined with 1410 ends up being a lot. The TAs were very helpful during this class and in workshop. You go to lab every other week and the weeks in between are workshop weeks where you write your plans for the next week's experiment. You also get tokens to re-do assignments if you don't master them which is nice and helpful. You can do well in this class relatively easy if you work hard and get everything done on time. #tCFfall2021

The work was pretty tedious. You had to submit a pre-lab, post-lab, and a summary/lab plan each week. On top of that, you have to do presentations, scientific writings, and quizzes. Your experience will depend a lot on your TA and your lab group. Most of the times though, you'll have very little instruction on what to do. I left a couple of the experiments barely even knowing what the main objective was. There was also some stuff that you were just expected to understand? Which was confusing. In general, this class was a hit or a miss.

To be perfectly honest, I did not like this lab very much. Firstly, you very occassionaly see the actual professor (there is a different TA per lab section). Although the labs aligned pretty well with the material being taught in the CHEM 1410 lecture, I thought that the labs were pretty boring and vague. For a 1 credit course, the amount of work required (a prelab, postlab, and summary per lab) was a lot of unnessecary/busy work. I was also disappointed with the grading system since it was based on a mastery/failure basis. For example, there were three quizzes for the semester and if you got more than 3 questions wrong (out of 10) on any quiz (or the try-again attempt), the highest score you could get for the course was automatically knocked down two whole letter grades (an A-), which really sucked assuming you did all of the other work for the course.

For a 1 credit class, there is a great deal of work. However, the post-labs should never take you too long, nor should the pre-labs. I never found myself overly stressed with this class. We were in the actual lab every other week. However, because of this format, we had to write our own procedures for each lab, which proved to be very difficult, especially if your group is bad.

If your group is bad/lazy/not a good intelligence balance, FIX IT before it's too late. While I received an A in this course, I always left the lab feeling distressed due to the lack of help or knowledge from my group. There was another girl in it who helped a ton, but the boys were useless and literally so rude too.

Anyway, if you work hard and go to office hours you will get an A. My best advice is to make sure you make a conscious effort to do well on the quizzes. They are open note and internet, which is nice. I never studied, but I did organize tabs and old PDFs before the period. Make sure you understand conceptual aspects of each lab to master the quizzes. While you might know how to do the math, sometimes there are curveball questions that don't make sense.

The pre-labs are relatively easy. Check with a friend so you know you got them right, maybe one who is in the section a week before you so theirs is already graded. For summaries and plans, just make sure you answer every single question and have headings. They don't care if the info is correct, they just care that it's there.

For scientific writings, WORK on these more than a night before. You will most likely get a M grade on both if you work hard, but make sure you truly go in depth and have reputable references to fall back on. Overall this class isn't too bad. Work was manageable. My least favorite part was having to be with the obnoxious boys in my lab group and having to do most of the work while they fooled around.

This class was okay. Professor Morkowchuk was fast at responding and she was very clear with directions and good at explaining things. It’s just a very time consuming class. You have prelabs and postlabs due before workshop, 3 hour lab periods, scientific writings, and presentations. The class isn’t hard but the grading system is weird. You need an 80% or higher on every assignment or quiz in order to master the assignment; anything lower and you get a 0. You get 6 tokens for the semester which you can use to fix what you messed up in assignments if you failed them, but you should plan to use those on the quizzes because you need to get mastery on every single quiz in order to get an A in the class. Make sure to make cheat sheets for those. TAs are kind of slow at grading so always check Gradescope so you know when they release things. You only have a certain amount of time to use a token.

This class is more work than you would expect from a 1 credit course, but it's all easy busy work, so I didn't mind it that much. The weeks alternated as "workshop" weeks and "lab" weeks. On workshop weeks, you only meet for one hour to plan the experiment with your group. On labs, you meet for as long as it takes to complete the lab. Some weeks, we were done in 1.5 hours, other weeks it took the full 3 hours. The experiments are fun and not difficult, and the TA was very helpful. Instead of traditional grades, you either pass or don't pass each assignment, which takes the stress off of always striving to get a certain grade on an assignment. Depending on how many assignments you pass, you are assigned a letter grade at the end of the semester. Don't let this scare you though- it is not hard to get an A.

This class entirely depends on your TA, so pray you get a good one. The quizzes are by far the hardest thing to get mastery on, but you can always use a token for them (the redos are similar to the original). The post labs and pre labs get really annoying by the end so try and get them done early because otherwise they will take you forever and it’s not fun. Always make sure you talk to your group so nothing gets messed up during your experiment and check your experiment plan with your TA so that you don’t end up doing something totally wrong.

Boring and very easy labs. They use a mastered/not yet mastered grading system (80% or above is mastered) and you get 7 tokens to use to redo assignments or turn them in late. My TA was an easy grader, so I was able to get an A+. But it is a super easy class that is 99% taught by TAs.

The TAs in both the workshop and the actual lab itself were really helpful and knowledgeable in answering questions. My lab TA was Nhu and she was really nice. The labs were pretty easy and rarely took up the whole 3 hours allotted. Specifications grading/grading for mastery was also really nice and took off a lot of pressure (I could get some wrong on a quiz and still get the same grade as if I hadn't gotten any wrong). Prelab and postlab questions weren't that difficult though they could be time-consuming to answer. We had to give a couple of presentations but they weren't hard to do - basically it's the same information you already have from your planning/postlab. I think the experience also depends a lot on your lab group for the semester.