CHEM BC3328

Anna's lectures are basically incomprehensible, as she will talk at the speed of light without taking care to explain things to students who might be learning this material for the first time. The workload for this class would be crazy for a 3-credit course, let alone 1.5 credits. And her "4 quizzes" (ie. 3 tests and one final) are quite challenging. However, don't let me scare you; I am mostly posting this review because i think that Anna is failing at her job to educate and inspire young would-be scientists. The course is certainly doable, as long as you go into it expecting to put a decent amount of time and energy in. You can do it! And then, once you're done, you too can air out all of your grievances on culpa.

we had pre-lab computational assignments, lab notebook prep, powerpoints and videos to review, and some kind of post-lab assignment for every lab, whether it was a worksheet or lab report. It's definitely a lot of work and I would spent many late nights in the library the day before lab

Pre lab assignment (computation + worksheet, videos, notebook) = ~1-2 hours per week Lab reports (5 total) = ~3 hours a week Final Exam = ~3 hours of studying lol

weekly lab write ups and questions. fairly easy final.

75% Lab Reports 25% Final There is a pre-lab each week, which is not bad at all, and then the report is generally due the next week. Combined, I normally spend about 3-6 hours on the class outside of lab, which isn't bad considering it is a 2.5 credit hour class.

Coming from someone who did well in this class, Anna Ghurbanyan is truly a mean-spirited person. She claims to care for her students, but in reality, she is apathetic and has no grasp of what it is truly reasonable to expect (from college undergraduates, or really, from any mortal person). Example: every lecture goes 10 minutes over the allotted time (which, in my book, is already disrespectful), but the real kicker is that she will yell at and insult any student who tries to leave while she is still speaking. Another example: once, before class, she asked: "is everyone ready to take this quiz?" and one student (the poor soul) jokingly responds, "no!" Anna did not take this as a joke; rather, she got extremely mad and began ranting about how hard she had worked to make this test and how we ought to do well. Third, related Anna-ism: on the front of every test, she will write "please do well"---with a smiley face, of course. The worst thing about this is that I think she truly believes it is inspirational. Oh, Anna.

I literally love Dr. V! She's very knowledgeable, funny, and definitely a bit scary sometimes in lab but it's just because she wants you to learn. Out of all the instructors, her office hours were definitely the most helpful- she goes over all the concepts clearly and gives you tips on what to include in your post-lab worksheets/lab reports. Other reviews were saying how she tends to play favorites, which I can definitely see being true in the actual lab, but she definitely does not grade based on favoritism. As someone who she likely favored, she still graded me very harshly, but that's just how orgo lab is- all the other instructors will find ways to take off points too.

Allen was the second professor in my section, so he was less active (didn't give the prelab lecture.) He was generally nice and encouraging in the lab, but he didn't always have the best sense of what was going on. Because of that, he would sometimes tell me to do things that would later get marked down in grading. He was also a surprisingly tough grader for how laid back he was in class.

This woman is a gem. Makes the labs fun and stress free. She is the most popular instructor in the help room and for good reason she explains things well and doesn't make you feel stupid. She's so nice and not intimidating and grandmotherly that it's easy to forget that she has a PhD from Harvard. Go to her help room hours if only just to chat!

Although the reviews made me a little scared to take this class, along with the anxiety-ridden experience I had in Gen Chem lab. But this lab has been wonderful, albeit not completely free of anxiety (will chemistry ever be, though?) The class overall has been really engaging, fun, and cool! I love all the experiments. Of course, sometimes you feel lost in lab and are so worried because you got only a spec of product back while everyone else got a gram or more. But don't worry! If you take the time to understand the theory, which isn't too hard to do with office hours EVERY DAY, they don't care that your results weren't perfect. I once got a percent recovery of 0.11% while the average among my friends was probably 20-40% and I didn't lose a single point for that as I explained what I thought happened. Again, if you don't know what happened go to office hours and they will help you brainstorm ideas. I find the grading to be extremely fair and not that difficult at all. If you explain the theory well and include the components listed in the lab manual you are almost guaranteed a 90% or higher. I am currently studying for the final in the class, which they have set us up to succeed on, with the helpful practice questions in the manual and the practice test, along with review sessions and again, office hours every day! As for Dr. Rao herself, she is a pleasant, helpful, smart prof…