Intensive Organic Chem Lab · Chemistry
1 prelab (1 hour) and 1 postlab (2-5 hours) due pretty much every week + 3 lab reports and 1 research proposal, all of which were 10 pages. The workload is quite heavy for a 3 credit class, but not unexpected for a lab course.
Fay is a great professor who makes lab fun and exciting. The positives: - All of the experiments were incredibly relevant to the world and/or current chemical developments, so you never feel like you're just doing busy work for the sake of fulfilling a lab requirement. - Fay is always very friendly and willing to help clarify any questions or concerns - The class emphasizes learning and truly understanding the underlying chemical principles and therefore actually develops you as a chemist and/or researcher. - You will come out of this class knowing how to write a cohesive lab report and research proposal, the latter of which sets you up well for upper lever chemistry courses. She wants your writing to sound like a story, which sounds silly at first, but it definitely all clicks by the end of the semester. The negatives: - none! she's great!
3 lab reports + ~8-9 post labs + 1 final project proposal. 4-5 hours/week for post-labs. 7-8 hours for lab reports. Grading was very fair and pretty generous.
Loved Fay's class! She was super approachable and knowledgeable about all the topics covered in each lab and was always available to help students out whenever needed. Though her post-labs were complex at times, they were never overwhelming and she truly made organic chemistry in a lab setting so enjoyable. She starts off with a 1 hour lecture of the lab of the day, followed by individual guidance as the lab work actually started. One of my favorite professors I've had during my time at Columbia so far. 10/10 would recommend taking her class if you can!
Weekly quizzes, lab notebook prep for each class, 5 (long) post labs, and 4 lab reports
To begin with, Fay is a great person. She is truly very kind, lovable, and obviously cares a lot about her students. She's always responsive to emails, holds extra office hours if needed and answers every question, no matter how simple or complex. That being said, for the love of God, do not take this class. It is a general rule with STEM labs that you won't be getting much (if anything at all) from the work you do in the course. We all know it, the TAs know it and the professors know it. Fay did not seem to get that memo. Intensive Organic Chem Lab is basically a lot of work with no return whatsoever. Her lectures and the instruction manual covered the basics of the material covered. But for the quizzes, post-labs and lab reports, you had to know how to apply all these concepts that she covered theoretically. Fay is a great lecturer and if you go to office hours it becomes apparent that she can explain everything to you. If you can't go to office hours though, you're kinda fucked. I had to teach myself how to interpret NMR spectra (and even if you think you know how to do that from Orgo Lectures, trust me, you don't) and how to write a "proper" chemistry paper. The grading is also insanely nitpicky -- the average on the quizzes and post-labs never got above 12/15, and you could lose points on the most insignificant aspects (defining one peak, out of your 10!, as a multiplet i…
LEARNED SO MUCH about organic chem including different types of compounds, their synthesis, composition and applications
- Less work towards the end of the course but honestly have barely any recommendations because I LOVED THIS CLASS
We learned organic chemistry lab techniques such as HNMR, IR, liquid-liquid extraction, chromatography, purification, and about various reactions. The first few weeks really focused on these techniques and applying to important concepts like stereochemistry. This then morphed into learning more advanced topics that apply to multiple disciplines such as MOFs for carbon capturing, biodegradable polymers, and chemical recycling.
This was my first in person chemistry lab at Columbia so I learned a lot of technical skills, such as reading HNMR and IR, and also how to write lab reports and post- labs, which is a different type of writing from historical or english writing