CHEM 3811

I don’t know why everybody hates this class so much. This was probably the best lab I’ve ever had. The lecture is pointless, but the labs are pretty short. The lab reports can be annoying/suck up a lot of your time, but start early, go to office hours, and work with others , and you can get an A. Professor Pate is super helpful at explaining concepts, but because he is so thorough, he will give you a very long explanation. Working with others, but NOT copying answers, is key because it’s very easy to get stuck on a question. Also, NEVER choose Monday lab. Thursday or Friday is probably the best. You also get 7 late days to use if you’re having a tough week. Also, there’s no final.

Professor Pate is brilliant at what he does, but he can be disorganized. It’s an interesting course, but pretty rough.

Brooks Pate is great and he really cares about your learning. Lab reports are time consuming a.f. but you end up learning a lot. Not easy but def more chill than organic chem labs

Prof. Pate is quite possibly the most knowledgeable and best professors I've ever had. He lectures for hours with absolutely no notes, and knows the course material as well as any other professor I know. He is a very engaging lecturer, and takes time to teach you about what he really think is important. He is incredibly fair and made the avg. course GPA about a 3.4, even though only 5/40 or so students only got a solid A. During the lab lectures, Prof. Pate also sets aside time to talk about other important and interesting happenings in chemistry and physics. He is a great guy, and chose TAs who were very helpful. With that being said, I don't think anyone knew what we were really doing while in lab most of the time. There isn't a lab manual, like for orgo lab, only somewhat vague instructions as to what we are actually supposed to do. The material somewhat follows the material in the actual pchem class. The lab reports generally take 6-10 hours to write, and there are 3-4 of them, including 1-2 group projects with a group paper and presentation. The lab reports are very difficult because no one knows whats going on half the time, and there is no real rubric to follow. I would still strongly recommend Prof. Pate if you have to take this class

Brooks Pate is my goat. He is a very knowledgeable professor, and he has your best interest in mind! All of the due dates are extremely reasonable, and the instructions for each assignment are very approachable! He makes an effort to do a mini lecture at the beginning of every lab section, and I have heard it helped people that were taking CHEM 3410 understand the subject better. That being said, the grading is very very specific, espeically for the first big assignments. I found myself getting points off for things that were never mentioned anywhere, and I had no way of knowing. However, Pate is very accomidating, and he is very dilligent about giving you points back if you feel like the grading was unfair. Unfortantely, the TA's are typically randomly assigned first year graduate students, and so have little knowledge about pchem. This was extremely frustrating during lab if I had a question, but Pate's office hours helped to clear any confusion I had. There is a lot of fear surrounding this class, but know that everything will be alright, even if you happen to fail one of the assignments due to the wildly specific grading (like I did).