CHEM 1811

I entered 1st year knowing I wanted to be a chemistry major and was hoping this class would prepare me to do well in future research. While it did reinforce some techniques I had forgotten how to do, all this class did was waste my time. Every week you will have to write a lab report, sometimes up to 15 pages, and very few people receive higher than an 85-90 on them. The grading scale is amazingly harsh, and while I did finish with an A, I do not recommend this class. It may be different if it is not being "taught" by Pompano, but even if you are taking the 1810 lecture and plan on majoring in chemistry, I do not think this class is worth it at all. Pompano only shows her face for 50 minutes a week during the useless lab lecture and provides no feedback on grading or content; her office hours are terrible.

If possible, have a TA check your first lab report because they are looking for a specific type of format and I got screwed over because I didn't know what they were looking for the first time. Your lab reports will most likely get better over the time, but if you already screwed up in the beginning, it's hard to recover. This class is honestly whatever, I wouldn't take it if you don't have to.

This class is honestly ridiculous. The amount of work is honestly unjustifiable. The labs completely unrelated both to the corresponding lecture, and to the other lectures. The TA's are less than worthless, and their grading is harsh with no feedback or lessons learned. The only reason to take this class is if you plan on remaining in the 800 series for all four semesters.

The amount of work for this class is just not justifiable. I would not recommend anyone take this class. Your GPA will take a hit and sometimes you may need to spend 20 hours on a report. I'd say I generally spent, on average, 5 hours per week on this class but this could vary a ton. Not worth it. Also, don't waste your time in the lectures.

I found grading to be very inconsistent. The TA I got was the most strict out of them that it's pretty much nitpicking every single thing that he perceived as a mistake without providing a thorough explanation and I felt that the grading was quite unfair compared to other lab sections, which I heard through many of other students around me, that their TAs grading is much, much more lenient. The excessively harsh remarks and grading actually discouraged me from writing the lab reports. Furthermore, the lecture was quite behind compared to the chem 1810 lecture. Overall, I seriously do not recommend other people to take this course. From what I heard, if you really want to take chem 1810 lecture but don't have the lab credit for 1000s series, you can take the chem 1810 lecture and chem 1411 lab, which would exclude you from this hell course.

While this lab has really interesting material for us to learn, the fun I had in this class was greatly - if not completely - negated by the harshness of the grading. The Teaching Assistants do their best to make this course enjoyable, but the fact that the graders of our report rotate every week make it difficult to meet the standards of the different TAs. I've had times where I would check with a TA to have him confirm my answer, and remarked that it was sufficient. Lo and behold, the grader (presumably a different TA) thought otherwise and took points off for it. It would seem that the TAs at times contradict each other. Be prepared to put in hours for the laboratory reports that may take up to 6 hours to write, and make sure to cross-check with the TAs during office hours to ensure that what wrote is correct. Despite the work involved, the laboratory sessions were very exciting and helped me learn more advanced laboratory techniques that gives you a good grounding for future laboratory work.

TL;DR : An enjoyable lab, but be prepared to work really hard, go to TA office hours to ensure your lab reports meet the rubrics.

This is an interesting intro lab course. The big problems are TA grading and lack of correlation with the CHEM 1810 course. As a three-credit lab, it's demanding. The final project is fun, but the grading there is harsh even though the project claims to be a grade-booster. If you know who grades your report each week, frequent their office hours because the grading is wildly inconsistent. Make sure you're efficient with your time and preparation; my partner and I usually left lab before 4 pm or so because we worked quickly and had our procedures spelled out before we came to lab. You'll learn lab technique.

I would not recommend taking the accelerated chemistry route unless you are sure you don't want to major in anything else. Taking six credits of chemistry really eliminates the opportunity to explore other classes the university has to offer. The lab reports take a long time to write and there is usually one every week. While the guidelines for writing the reports were abundant, they were contradictory. I finished the semester still unsure if my formatting for reports was correct. The lab reports a graded super hard which really sucks. Do not bother going to the lecture, as it doesn't actually help with your report writing skills.

This class was definitely not recommendable if you can avoid it. Unfortunately that's hard for those who want to take the 1800 series. The lecture with Harman is absolutely fantastic, and definitely worth the added difficulty (it's still manageable). However, this lab was pretty horrible. The TA's were incredibly inconsistent with their grading, and since they rotated groups every week, that meant that it was next to impossible to do well on the lab reports (since they all had their own vision of the already subjective rubric). On top of that, there was no timeliness to the grading, so we couldn't even make corrections on our prior lab reports. Sections of the rubric were weighted unfairly, and it was designed to make achieving an A difficult. The course material wasn't interesting; it was a typical gen chem lab with labs that almost everyone has done or experienced at some point before. Professor Pompano is so sweet and very approachable, but it is her policy not to change grades on individual lab reports, even though there were some major discrepancies between people's lab reports that should have been given a re-grade. Overall, if you can avoid this lab do so, because it's very time-consuming and not worth the effort. Unfortunately this is not possible for most majors :(

Kind of a nightmare if you don't start your weekly reports early and quickly learn ACS formatting (tables, figures, etc). Read the book even though they don't assign chapters, they really do help you write and are honestly more useful than the TAs. The labs themselves are pretty fun though and you do learn a lot. Make a good study group as soon as you can.

The class is somewhat interesting and the labs are okay, but the class isn't as engaging as future chemistry labs. The professor was great though, and I think she's going to continue to improve in future semesters as she seems to be passionate about being a good professor. My only major complaint was that it was difficult for me to understand what it took to write a good lab report. It wasn't really well described, and I didn't figure it out until later in the semester. I highly recommend going to TA office hours every week to review your lab report before you submit it.

Professor Pompano is a good teacher--she is very reasonable and puts in a lot of effort to help her students understand chemistry and lab report writing techniques. Going to her office hours is EXTREMELY helpful as she will answer specific questions about your lab report and help explain concepts covered in lab.

The labs are interesting, but the lab reports are very tough and take a lot of time (there are weekly lab reports). It is important to be proactive and start working on the lab reports days before they are due so that you have enough time to attend office hours and do peer-review.