CHEM 1811

We did some pretty cool labs in this course, such as a nicotine titration and some analytical chem labs. My one comment on this lab is that it was very disorganized. The lab is expectedly very dependent on the TA, whose main focuses are their research. The TAs often didn't know what was expected of the students up until they were told to grade the reports. But Prof. Zhang was very helpful and sometimes popped into lab to answer questions and help us out. The reports were very difficult, sometimes spanning 15 pages, other times just being a short-answer format. The TAs are VERY stringent in their grading, so be sure to absolutely master "ACS formatting" and ask them what tables/graphs they want and where.

A very difficult course. Zhang is very intelligent, but his lectures come off as confusing. However, the lab assignments are outlined and easy to understand via canvas and the workbook. The class is challenging, but prepares students to write formal lab reports and get the hang of ACS formatting. The labs themselves vary, with some taking 1 hour to complete and others the full 3 hours. They are very engaging, with interesting topics that somewhat overlap with 1810. Overall, I liked the class and worked well with my table, which is crucial. Ben the TA is the absolute best, his office hours were so helpful and he is really good at teaching.

this class was definetly a lot more stressful and unclear with grading expectations. really comes down to having a good ta and being able to attend your specific ta's office hours. the lectures are ok i guess but really brutal because they were 8 am on fridays. very heavy weighting on lab reports (i think it was like 70% is just lab report category) so it can be a bit stressful and easy to fluctuate your grade. worth it in the end because it covers a lot (covers what would be 1411 and 1421, so do try to get this lab if you are doing 800s sequence) and then u dont have to take a chem lab second semester second year so it works out.

This was my most stressful class this semester. I ended up with an A, but I had to dedicate 4+ hours (a lot for a 2 credit class imo) for this class on top of the lab session each week to achieve that. While most of the labs were pretty fun and sound more interesting than the 1411 labs, what made the class really annoying are the assignments related to the labs. The formatting/structure is incredibly specific (and you can get a lot of points taken off for it) and the concepts were not aligned with what we were learning in 1810. Highly recommend going to TA office hours to get help with that!!

I had an awesome duo of TAs (shoutout to Ben and Kwan) and they made the sucky Friday labs so much more enjoyable. Prof. Zhang doesn't show up in the lab that often, but he was very considerate after what happened last month and waived the last two lab write-ups. Overall, a class with relatively fun labs and not-so-fun assignments/grading -- if you don't want to spend hours writing lab reports, then probably would not recommend. #tCFfall22

This lab was my favorite class of the fall semester! While the labs were more difficult that the 1411 lab, they were much more fulfilling and reinforced the material much better. The first lab feels very crazy simply because you are learning where everything is in the lab, but as the class moves on, the labs calm down until lab 9 which is extremely difficult. Sometimes, the lab is far ahead of the lecture so you'll find yourself learning a lot independently in order to be able to perform the lab. This class was definitely worth the extra time and effort, especially if you love chemistry. For example, while the 1411 lab was measuring the accuracy of glassware, we were measuring atomic orbital energies with computational chemistry software. However, our class was not curved at all and graded on the bell curve. If you want an A, you will need to do better than the other people in lab which he doesn’t really make clear.

The labs are interesting, and the professor explains things well, but this class does not align at all with the CHEM 1810 lecture. Right now I am trying to write a lab report on chemical reactions identifying unknown compounds, but we literally haven't discussed a single reaction in the lecture. we are still learning about the structure of molecules. the TAs and professor help when you ask, but it's so frustrating to constantly spend hours every week googling the pre-lab and lab report questions because there is no way to answer them without previous knowledge. definitely use office hours. It is curved a lot though so that helps!

There are pros and cons to taking this course over 1411. I think overall, if you want to major in Chemistry or something closely-related to Chemistry or you just really like Chemistry, you would get more satisfaction out of taking 1811 over 1411. However, if you are taking General Chemistry because you’re premed or for whatever reason you need it to get a check in the box, 1811 is not the course for you. The labs in 1811 are definitely more realistic, more interesting, and more fulfilling than the labs in 1411. However, 1811, is significantly more work than 1411. The lab reports take a LOT of time and the grades are often mediocre. Furthermore, your TA plays a major role in how well you do. The two most frustrating things about this course were the inconsistencies in grading among the different TA’s and the amount of work invested in the lab reports not being commensurate with the grade you receive. Each section has a different TA and each TA graded wildly differently. Furthermore, going to the office hours for a TA different than your own was often not helpful since each TA had different expectations for style and content. Additionally, no matter how much time I spent on a report, I felt that I would have received the same grade had I invested half of the amount of time and effort in it than I actually spent on it. The TA feedback is valuable but the grading is extremely frustrating. However, there were opportunities to boost your grade although some of them backfired because they were based on peer grading, and even if one of your peers gave you a much lower grade than the other and the TA, their score would still be factored into your overall grade for the assignment. Overall, this course was often very frustrating; however, I do not regret taking it and if you are driven and invested in Chemistry, you should definitely take this course over 1411. Moreover, if nothing else, being allowed to take 1821 makes taking this course worth it.

so Prof Zhang is pretty erratic. His lectures and his labs don't line up. It's a lot of figuring stuff on your own. His pre-labs are not straightforward. The TA's make or break the class. GET KELLY DUNHAM. SHE"S THE BEST. Prof Zhang is also a big believer in only a certain percentage of people should be getting A's. You should be prepared to write a lab report every week. If you haven't written a lab report in a short amount of time, then I don't recommend this class. One thing is that 1811 is much better than the 1411 because there's much less BS labs that you could've done in middle school.

Professor Zhang is relatively new to the course material and it shows. He understands the material himself but does not effectively explain anything about the lab - you must rely on having a good TA for that- PS Kelly Dunham is the best TA if you can have her in Fall 2019. This class does NOT align with the material in 1810 so that is not helpful. The lectures/discussions relatively unnecessary to understand the lab, but you must attend in order to get credit for the in-class activities that Professor Zhang often does. He may tell you that something is extra credit, but it probably is NOT. What he calls extra credit he explained to me as "an extra in-class bonus activity" after I almost did not turn one in and asked for clarification on the matter. He often does not help when writing reports so attend TA office hours if you want high grades because they are the ones grading this class. Still, as long as you understand chemistry, you should be able to pull an B at minimum.