CHEM 4410

Professor Grisham's class is required for biochemistry majors. That being said, if you can find any way around taking this class, do yourself a favor and do not take it. Professor Grisham's exams are aimed at making students fail. He does not enjoy when students do well in his class because this is a sign that he is not making the course "challenging" enough for you. In addition, Grisham has one of those classes where if you want pretty good grade you have to attend office hours. He will go over specific material that will appear on the exam during office hours and you have to go or watch the recordings if you want to know this. Even if you go to office hours and every class there will be questions on the exam that you were not prepared for. This is intentional. Do not let it discourage you because no one else probably knows the answer either. Exam averages were in the 50s-60s and Grisham will send out rude emails about these averages after the exams. He sends these out every year. Ignore them. Do not fall for the kind old man persona that he tries to put on. Grisham wants your college experience to be centered around his class. Also the PSAFE assignment is the least helpful, most time consuming waste of time you will ever experience in any class but you also have to go to office hours for this and do your best because it is a big portion of the grade. I would give this class a 2/5 only because everyone suffers together but it was one of the worst major-required courses I took at UVA.

Some of these reviews are ruthless! Professor Grisham is one of the nicest profs out there, especially if you get to know him well. Exams are tough, but don't worry, he curves and especially looks for improvement on exams when assigning final grades. Go to office hours as he takes note of the students who come. He's quite approachable, I think the reason a lot of these reviews about him being rude are surfacing is simply because he is of a different generation and isn't "hip with the kids" so to speak, so you just have to understand that he means well and is trying very hard to make the class enjoyable. Beware the pop quizzes, and don't let them catch you off guard but take them as a learning opportunity!

He literally said if you spend about 9 hours per week you'll get somewhere around C. To be honest, PSAFE is much better than the exams (at least for me). It's basically getting an assigned protein at the beginning of the semester and you'll be working on this project of writing a paper and creating slides explaining its structure and functions. My assigned paper is kinda interesting so I really like this project, and it won't take lots of your time. And the TAs are really helpful!! Other than that, definitely go to Grisham's office hours and study the problems, it would help a lot on the quizzes. For the exam, the average is often 50-ish, but seems like he will curve. Looking at this score is just too awful. So all I can say is good luck. And don't take PChem and Biochem at the same time. You'll be so screwed.

I think Professor Grisham is a very nice, approachable man. He's always happy to answer students' questions during and after class. That being said, no other class at UVA has ever made me feel as stupid as I felt taking this one lol. There were three exams, each worth 23% of your grade. The PSAFE project is worth another 23%. The PSAFE project isn't too bad, just make sure to ask the TAs if you have any questions at all. There are also extra credit opportunities to help make up any lost points on PSAFE stuff. It's a pretty rewarding experience at the end. The remaining 8% comes from pop quizzes. In retrospect, the pop quizzes weren't all that difficult, but the average scores are so low (~6/10) because it's hard to keep up with all the reading and lecture content. There was at least one quiz where it was just a problem from the back of the textbook chapter. The textbook chapters are very long and dense; it would take me hours to get through a single one. My advice would be to at least skim the textbook ahead of lecture. During lecture, Grisham doesn't say much that isn't already on the slides, but you should still go to class and pay attention because he'll specifically tell you what might be on the exam and what he definitely will not be covering.

Grisham provides a list of recommended practice problems. To study for the exams, I did as many of them as I could. I didn't really read the textbook since there was so much on the slides already. I just tried to commit the structures on the slides to memory with as much detail as possible. It will be hard no matter what honestly. The exams aren't explicitly cumulative, but both the 2nd and 3rd exams had at least one 10-point problem that required knowledge from the previous exam(s).

This class was a major source of stress for me because Grisham never specified what the curve at the end would look like so I had no idea what my final grade would be. In the end, my final grade came out to slightly under 80%, but I got an A, so yes, that curve was BIG.

#tCFfall22

Professor Grisham is a very nice man who is very approachable and knowledgeable. That being said, this class is not for the weak. Grade wise, your grade is made up of 3 exams, 6 pop quizzes and a final project called PSAFE. PSAFE seems like a big project (and it is), it I think it was very manageable and should be easy point. There are bigger assignments, but there are several opportunities for extra credit, and the biggest issue you might run into is the software being a bit buggy.

For exams, it sucks because I found the content of the exam very interesting, but his exams sometimes don't feel like they test your knowledge. There will be big questions that he says to work on in class like "be sure to do XYZ as it will be 20 points on your exam," but other times he will give example (cool examples) but there are so many examples that have so much nuance and it can be hard to remember and keep track of everything. Other times, he will explicitly tell you to study something because it will be on the exam and then it will not be on the exam at all. Grisham wrote the textbook, and all his lectures are derived from the textbook. I would personally recommend going to lecture first and figuring out what in the textbook you should know, and then going in after the fact to skim the textbook and relearn any concepts you might have missed in class.

He will end up curving the class a lot. The averages for our exams were around the 50s and 60s. A general rule is 1) try to stay around the average or slightly above it or 2) try to show improvements with the exams. Grisham curves the class a lot, and if you can do either of these things you should be good to go. He does not want to fail you. He just wants you to learn about biochemistry. Good luck !!

#tCFF23