Jack Norton

The course was split in two, and a lower undergrad curve was given (which was not cool). The course is hard, especially if you're 3D challenged (since half the course deals with conformations and turns of molecules). While Professor Owen is an excellent teacher that deserves more praise for teaching than any other chem professor I've encountered over my time here, taking time out of his schedule to meet with students and further explain difficult topics (along with the T.A.), Professor Norton is a bit more disorganized and awkward to approach. Both of them are good teachers, but while Professor Owen sticks mostly to the book, Professor Norton sticks more to his notes and myriad handouts. It's not an easy class, as I have said, but you'll learn a lot and gain many chemistry skills that were missing in gen chem.

This class was very easy, basically a review from highschool. There doesn't seem to be a need to go to his lectures - about a 10% attendance rate thoughout the semester - because really, he follows the textbook pretty closely. But, if there's something you don't understand, he's very nice during office hours.

I learnt how to critically analyze and understand chemical reactions, this in turn makes chemistry more fun to me!

To be completely, truly honest, I'm not smart or disciplined enough to learn this material on my own. However, thankfully, I had a lot of help, and I knew several people who were extraordinarily patient and kind enough to teach me and answer my countless stupid questions. Quite frankly, the course isn't designed for intrepid explorers wanting to learn about inorganic chemistry for the first time, and especially not for undergraduates. I think most of us managed to stumble through it, and I'm (sort of not really) proud of the grade I got, proof that I survived through the material and the, at times, poor teaching. But the grade I got wasn't that great, even with the effort I put into the course. I know that there will be others like me who think that they're invincible and reckless and relish the challenge of taking a grad school class. (And I know that this class hasn't stopped my desire to learn more chemistry; quite the opposite.) I just hope that you will register for this course with a huge grain of salt and I greatly recommend that you know nice people who do inorganic chemistry for a living, *especially* if Jack Norton is teaching the course, because asking them is what helped me the most in understanding the material. Prof. Owen's part was difficult and frustrating, but it wasn't entirely his fault. The material is hard, and one of the biggest flaws of this course is th…

I was happy in Professor Norton's class. He doesn't really teach much in class that you can't get out of the book, but if you want to learn the material slowly, that's what he'll give you. I slept through a lot of the classes I went to. Actually I would fall to sleep, have a dream or two or three, then wake up and feel like I hadn't missed much, which was nice. Take the class. If you're good with chemistry the workload is light and if you're not, he's thorough and takes the lesson slowly.

I learned a great deal about predicting reactivity in organic molecules using principles of physical chemistry. This class was a very interesting deeper dive into many of the concepts that were simply taught in sophomore organic chemistry.

I have no idea why this man has a silver nugget. He is incredibly disorganized and frustratingly inconsiderate of his students, particularly undergraduates. His lectures are all over the place and neither their point nor direction is ever clear. He doesn't seem to understand questions well: a student asked him if we should use his notes as a guide to what to focus on in the textbook or if we should focus on his notes more or vice versa, and he spent a good five minutes rambling about something else before he finally accidentally answered the question. Moreover, he looked offended when the student persisted that he wasn't answering her question. The workload is pretty light: he didn't give us any exams before the final (we had already had 2 exams before he took over), there was some reading, and we were supposed to be 4 problem sets, which shrunk to 3 due to aforementioned disorganization -- one counted double. I tolerated the second half of the Adv Orgo with Jack (the first half was taught by Professor Leighton and SO much clearer, easier to follow, though certainly more intense), but my gritted teeth have acquired a snarl behind them in the week or so. On the last day of class, he assigned a third problem set (even after he met with some snark over assigning a problem set over Thanksgiving and accidentally making one due on the monday of fall break -- fortunately he corrected…

Weekly quizzes during recitation, 3 midterms, 1 final.

Jack is an amazing person. The year I took Advanced Organic, four of the first year graduate students ended up choosing Jack as their doctoral advisor, not only because his research is interesting, but because he is genuinely a caring and considerate, sweet prof. I've never taken Gen. Chem with him, but I imagine his cute personalisms will carry over. His students often kindheartedly make fun of his shyness, his awkward hand gestures and his overall Jackness, but its because they love him. Most likely, he will get into some kinetics stuff (not sure what the GChem curriculum is), topics that he covers in his own research. His lectures in Adv. Organic were always very well-organized, he lectured pretty close to the textbook, his problem sets were long and challenging of course, but that's to be expected. His midterm followed his lectures/psets pretty closely, and he graded very fairly. My main advice to frosh taking his GChem course: go see him! If there's anything you don't understand, or if you're just looking to chat about the class, etc. shoot him an email. I'm sure he'll reply. He's probably very busy (I think he's pretty involved in the department) but he'll always make time for a student!

"Homeworks" are assigned but not collected. Quizzes are given weekly in recitation. The top five contribute to 1/5th of you're grade. 3/5ths comes from three midterms. 2/5ths from the final. That's 6/5ths, so he drops the worst 1/5th.