CHEM 1820

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS Serbulea is a nice woman ... but she falls behind in lecture and doesn't change exams to reflect this. Taking exams on reactions learned literally the morning of the exams results in sadness.

Dr. Serbulea is incredibly knowledgable, and genuinely wants her students to do well. That being said, the class is demanding and requires a lot of work. Also, lectures are at 8am, attendance is mandatory due to clickers, and you will never want to fall asleep more in your life.

Honestly, this class wasn't that bad. I thought that Dr. Serbulea did a very good job at teaching us the material, and it is clear that she is extremely passionate and knowledgeable about organic chemistry. I definitely learned a lot from this class. However, it definitely requires a lot of work; the work you put into this class is really what you get out of it. Discussion was mandatory (unlike CHEM 1810 where it wasn't) and was kind of long, but in the end the problems we worked on were pretty helpful in teaching and preparing you for the exams, and the TAs we had were very knowledgeable and awesome people. At first I found iClicker questions to be pretty stressful considering that there was a time limit, but overall they did help us get practice in quick problem-solving, as well as were great for testing understanding of material; and don't worry if you get a couple wrong, because she always drops a few when calculating you final grade. I thought that the exams were very fair, and I didn't mind that there was no curve, since there was the opportunity for extra credit, and homework and CCAs can really help your grade. Exam grading was pretty timely, and Dr. Serbulea made herself available to help during office hours, and was super willing to help out students when they had questions on-on-one, or to just talk.

On the other hand, she fell behind in teaching material often, and would sometimes go a little slow in lectures. This could just be due to the breadth and quantity of material that organic chemistry contains or because she wants to emphasize an important point, but be prepared to wanna fall asleep sometimes, especially bc lecture is at 8am like last semester (for those of you who took CHEM 1810). I also didn't like the fact that no practice exams were made available. This was mostly a problem for the first exam, since we would have no idea what to expect, but after seeing the first exam, it would get clearer how the upcoming exams would be structured. She definitely teaches more from the textbook, so I found her exams to be fine, as long as you could do the problems in discussion and understood what was in the reading.

Overall, even though this class was a lot of work and required a lot of time, Dr. Serbulea is a great professor who cares about teaching, and I learned a lot.

So this class is great for people who are interested in chemistry and are going for some kind of chem degree, if that's not you, then I'd probably stick with the 400 organic chem classes. Professor Serbulea is awesome; she cares a lot about the topic and her students and her lectures are generally easy to follow. That being said, Serbs has a habit of rambling about one topic (usually an easy one) for an ungodly amount of time and then rushing through the hardest stuff at the end. Fortunately, or unfortunately, she uses the discussion section to catch up on lecture material rather than only for actual discussions. The grading in 1820 is more spread out than in 1810, which is mostly exams. There is A LOT of homework on MasteringChem, but they aren't all that difficult and you get several attempts for each question so it's not hard to get high scores. Those really boost your final grade because they add up to a lot of weight. The exams themselves aren't particularly difficult and they have a certain pattern that you get used to (naming organic compounds and ranking compounds by certain properties). The average scores for 1820 exams was generally mid 80s, higher than 1810 exams, and they have built in bonus questions. Also 1820 and 1821 (lab) are both taught by Serbulea and they match up content a little bit, unlike 1810 and 1811, so they are easier as a pair. This class is really interesting and I thought it could be fun at times, mostly because of awesome classmates. If chem is an interest, I definitely recommend continuing the 800 classes with 1820. Good Luck!

Serbulea is a really good teacher and genuinely cares about you, though it may not seem like it at first. She assigns readings and assignments based on the textbook that cover the same content as her lectures, which seems annoying but helps in the long run. Compared to 1810, your grade is more spread out and tests are less of a big deal. Also, her exams are more straight-forward and to me, much more manageable once you know what to study. I found Serbulea made learning the content as easy as possible-which is good since the content can be tricky sometimes!
#tCFspring2021

I would definitely recommend 1820 with Serbulea. At the beginning of the semester, I spent a lot more time with the textbook and pre-lecture stuff before lectures and ended up being pretty bored during them. However, as the semester went on, I saw a lot more value in the lectures (the 8 AM time is absolutely brutal, and I definitely struggled with paying attention, but on the bright side, I was often so tired that I thought everything was hilarious, which kept me awake). When studying for the exams, I realized that actually doing the textbook problems as I went would have helped me significantly with understanding the content for discussions & discussion iClickers, so do that lol. She said to spend 12-15 hours outside of the class studying weekly-- I only did the masteringchem assignments and studied the week before exams and was fine. The exams themselves were pretty straightforward (the average for the third midterm was significantly lower than the others), and the grade is spread out. overall, I feel like this class is probably a lot better than 2410 would have been (no evidence for that just vibes).

Serbulea falls behind in lecture a lot, so sometimes you’ll be a week ahead in the readings and homework with stuff she hasn’t even begun to cover in lecture. Overall though, I didn’t think the class was too hard. There are TA office hours every week, and it’s useful to go to them especially to check your discussion answers. Discussion being mandatory isn’t fun but it’s good practice for what exam questions are like. I personally found Serbulea’s exams to be much easier than Harman’s - and the fact you can drop one of the three midterms helped my stress level. #tCFS24

As with the rest of the 800 series, this class is not for the feint of heart. It is leagues more demanding than the 400 series organic chemistry is, but in the end, you do end up learning more. Be prepared to do most, if not all, of your learning on your own. The textbook will be your best friend, and lectures are all but meaningless.

In fact, Serbulea knows this, which is why she employs iClickers, a program she uses to take attendance and ask questions throughout lecture, forcing you to be at every lecture every day. If it wasn't for the iClickers every day, most people would not attend lecture because they are so incredibly boring. She spends most of class on 2 or 3 slides, something you could learn by reading the textbook in 20 minutes. This leads to her not covering the rest of the reading's material, putting her behind, which adds up to her being 3 or 4 readings behind in lecture.

The readings themselves are very educational and even fun at times. With every reading, which are assigned twice a week, there is a pre-lecture quiz, 3-5 questions on the material in the reading. Except sometimes the material was not on the reading whatsoever and you have to look it up elsewhere. Furthermore, the autograder is sometimes very good at understanding what you mean, and other times is pathetically horrible it makes you want to quit chemistry forever.

The discussion sessions happen on Thursdays 3:30-5:30 and consist on solving problems based on the material read in the past week. They are actually very educational and good places to interact with and learn the material to a higher level, and the TAs are amazing and will help you with whatever you need. However, there were a few discussion sessions where the content of the questions was brand new content, which made progress go by much more slowly as the TAs had to explain the entire thing.

The exams are fair and straightforward, no curveballs, probably the best part of the course. The discussion questions are oftentimes harder than the exam ones, so if you pay attention in discussion, you will be good for the exams.