CHEM 3811

Professor Demas was useless for this lab because 80% of your grade is determined the lab reports. If you write four, 30 page professional looking reports, you will receive an A. The labs you choose are done in groups, so have a good partner, and get good results. Plus, in the reports, show you know the math throw a calculations section. Professor Demas required two short, painless problem sets that were answered straight from the lab manual and a final exam that had answers you could have found on the internet. The amount of work required in lab was relaxing because you had 3 weeks to complete the experiment and write the report, but it only required one day to complete the experiment. Keys are good lab partner and good knowledge of the lab report format. Other than that, don't need Demas for help because the T.A.'s were all the help you needed. Lab lecture was useless for the lab itself.

class is challenging. the course is harder than orgo, but more laid back. the experiments are ok- you learn some useful techniques for the 'real world'. your grade is based on 7 or 8 lab reports and a final (worth one lab report). the lectures can sometimes be hard to understand. TAs are awesome. Demas is pretty chill just don't let your cell go off in class or dispose of chemicals improperly. You'll do well in the class if you go to your TAs before turning in the lab reports.

This class is a huge pain. The lab reports wouldn't take very long except for you spend most of your time in excel doing data analysis and error propagation. Every lab report is graded by a different TA so what may be a A lab report for one TA can be a C for another which is a huge pain.

Demas is horrible, work with metcalf whenever possible. Try to work with your TA, becuase they take forever to give reports back and prob dont know what they are talking about. Try to be above the average and you will be fine.

Talking to Demas or hearing Demas talk makes me want to blow my brains out. He is horrible. Absolutely work with Metcalf when at all possible. I wish they had a box on here to show TA's you would not recommend. To put the cherry on top of all the misery, my TA (Amanda) was horrible as well. Rude, unfair, and just plain unknowledgeable. THIS CLASS SUCKSSSSSSSSSS.

THIS IS THE WORST CLASS OFFERED AT UVA. the chemistry department should pat itself on the back for making a horribly run class required for its fourth year majors. the class is horribly run, with no guidance on whatsoever. the lab is disorganized, the TAs and professors do not know where any of the supplies are or mostly how the equipment functions. the TAs grade in about a year, and you never get your reports back, nor do they help answer questions. the lab manual does not specifically state what is expected in reports, but you are still graded according to that secret information that the TA expected you to know and mention but was never said in lab lecture or the manual or during lab. the lab lecture talked about nothing applicable to lab. the TAs are rude (except one or two) and do not want to help. this all adds up to a horrible semester where you put in HOURS to prepare the lab reports and still do not satisfy "requirements". be prepared to stalk the TAs for any information to improve your reports which is the only way to succeed, no need to go to lab lecture except the first one, and pray your TA is nice. loads of fun.

The TA's for this class are really helpful, but Demas' lectures are TERRIBLE. There's no great reason to go to them, except that lecture material is all that appears on the final exam. The lab reports take FOREVER, and as of now (3 days after I took the final exam), the TA's still haven't graded three of my lab reports. So basically, you have no idea how you're doing in this class until the grade shows up on SIS.

Make sure to ask the head TA, (right now its Eun Yi) what is going on in all of your lab reports, all of the other TA's dont know what theyre doing, the class is managable if you stay on top of your lab reports which can take 10-12 hrs to really do completely

This is by far the worst class I have ever taken at UVA in all regards. The lab is completely unorganized. The TAs for the lab are generally clueless. The ONLY saving grace this semester was the head TA Eun who is extremely knowledgable and helpful. Everyone else was useless. Had no idea how to do the experiments.. oftentimes gave wrong instructions that required students to repeat parts of experiments.. just generally awful. A different grader grades every lab report, and you can pretty much count on getting terrible grades unless you spend insane amounts of time reading articles in order to understand the theory behind what is going on in lab. IF YOU HAVEN'T TAKEN PCHEM LECTURE AND ARE THINKING OF TAKING THIS CONCURRENTLY -- AVOID AT ALL COSTS. Much of the lab deals with quantum mechanics which aren't taught until the second semester.. you'll spend an insane amount of time doing background reading in order to understand the labs. Demas is the WORST PROFESSOR IN THE HISTORY OF THIS UNIVERSITY. He is difficult to understand, writes nonsense on the board, and presents disjointed, unintelligible powerpoint slides during lab lecture. The lecture is USELESS. Absolutely USELESS. Demas sent out a review sheet for his exam, and almost NONE of the 3 pages of the review sheet were on the exam. If you are a chemistry major that is required to take this class and it's too late for you to turn back and change majors, sucks for you.

This was the most unstructured class I have ever taken. The lab lectures are useless. Demas is incredibly unorganized. The only reason I went to lecture was because Demas started giving out pop quizzes on least squares/chi square derivations. I personally thought the final was okay. I memorized the material from the slides and the lab manual. I did run out of time and had to scribble down some last minute answers. The lab reports were awful. The TAs graded the reports differently. Each TA emphasized different things. I remember I asked a TA for help on a question and wrote what he said verbatim. The grader marked my response as incorrect (even though Demas also confirmed it). Some of the graders are absolute dicks. They try to take off unnecessary points because you forgot to state the beaker was a "Class A" piece of glassware. Eun and Kerui were fair and helpful, but everyone else was clueless and useless.