Organic Chemistry Lab

Without being insulting to the other professor(s) who teach this lab course as well, Anna is an amazing professor, the best Orgo Lab instructor and definitely the one you should take (even if you hear that she's a hard ass or whatnot, grading is based upon your TAs (who are in sections with all orgo lab instructors) and quizzes are the same with slight variations across different instructors so the grade distribution is normalized across all sections - Anna gives off the impression that she's the harder teacher but since you get the same grade evaluation across all sections, might as well take the best professor).

Anna delivers quick, concise lectures for an hour before the lab begins and she actually teaches the stuff better than Orgo I and I instructors did (I had Turro and Lambert (Lambert was amazing)). One problem with her lectures, however, is that she lectures right after you turn in your pre-lab (counts for a grade) and what's on the pre-lab is what she lectures about, so you have to spend about an hour usually figuring out how to do the pre-lab and then Anna goes over it the day it's due, and some of the pre-labs are quite hard or confusing (the first pre-lab required googling information as it wasn't in our textbooks and one of the pre-labs revisited Gen Chem and requried you to do ICE charts although it seemed so anachronistic that you wouldn't know to do ICE charts in an Orgo class).

Anna is always willing to help and she actually stays in the lab the majority of the time to help students rather than leaving it to the TAs. She also has a great sense of humor (she had some entertaining conflicts with this cheeky student in my class) and is very friendly. She's VERY available during office hours and before class and actually wants students to do well. She's also very quick at getting emails back to you.

The grade for Orgo (across all instructors) is curved to a B+, 88% I believe. It's easy to get a B+ if you put in the work (same as everyone else), but it's actually hard to get an A- as everyone's grades are about the same. Don't judge me, but one time (the TA's leave the quizzes for pick up at the front of the room) I rifled through everyone's quizzes to get a look at how my score stacked up and basically the range of quiz grades was 15-17/20 with one person getting a 9 (ouch!). So, obviously to get an A- you need to consistently be the one who gets 17/20 which is pretty damn difficult. A string of 16s and your set for a B+.

Orgo Lab sucks. But at least Anna is a great professor.

Anna was a pretty good lecturer. But those full-length lab reports were soul-sucking dementors. Quizzes were sometimes hard and asked questions that were not covered in Anna's lectures. 4 hour lab session + 10 hours working on lab reports + 3 hours writing up the next lab report's procedure and studying for the quiz is worse than two-timing a high-maintenance significant other with another high-maintenance girlfriend/boyfriend on the side. I'm guessing if you're taking this class there is no way around it, but your experience all depends on your TA, and how much you're willing to work your ass off. My TA happened to be a person with a sweet exterior and a heart of cold-blooded-GPA-slashing-evil. His/her grading was tougher than the Chicago Bulls' defense: every little slip-up and mistake is spotted and punished with severity.

I can't say I've enjoyed this course, but I can say that at times I've definitely hated this course. The labs definitely made me study hard and learn the experimental techniques very well, and I could see that I've learned at the end of it, but this knowledge should not have come at the cost of making me hate the material because of how much time this class took up and how much frustration it caused. I didn't hate orgo before. In fact, I liked it after having a marvelous orgo instructor. But now I do, just a little bit.

Anna's so incredibly sweet! As the previous review said, she sounds intimidating when she's lecturing, but one on one, she's the most approachable person ever. If she's around the computer lab when you're using ChemDraw there, she doesn't mind if you ask her to look over your mechanism (of course, it's your TA who actually grades the mechanisms, but having Anna's input doesn't hurt).

Her quizzes were frustrating at first because they seemed impossible to study for (especially the procedural questions). But they did get better as the term wore on, since her later quizzes were more conceptual and focused more on actual orgo mechanisms/concepts.

The lab reports weren't bad at all. Just make sure you answer all the questions, most of which are based on an understanding of the mechanism. Also pay careful attention to the formatting - my TA was a stickler about what kinds of information should show up in the introduction and what should be left in other sections of the report.

I took the lab with orgo II, and I highly recommend taking this route. I think part of the reason why the lab reports became relatively painless (and even easy) by the end was because I didn't have to spend time teaching myself the mechanisms and the concepts behind them - it was all review at that point. I've heard people say that the curve is better/more lenient and the expectations lower in the fall, but, assuming this to be true, I'm not sure that's worth all the frustration and headache of teaching yourself the material (especially if you're an undergrad with so many other commitments). And to be honest, there's something quite amazing about taking all those concepts you learned from the textbook and lecture notes and seeing how they work out in actual laboratory situations.

Ana was an awesome Orgo Lab instructor! At first she comes off as kind of a hard-ass because she delivers each lab's 30 mins - 1 hour mini-lecture very forcefully, but she was a complete sweetheart when it came to asking for advice on the lab in progress or for help on lab reports. One time she even went around the lab asking people to try the new organic moisturizing cream she had recently synthesized. I took the lab concurrent with the first semester of orgo, which I found to be very nice. Yes, some of the things taught in lab were not yet covered in lecture, but generally Ana did not expect that we knew them in the same depth as we had to in the lecture (I had Doubleday). Thus, learning the material in lab laid a nice groundwork for learning it again in lecture, and vice versa when it was covered in lecture first. Grading was a little bit convoluted, but Ana and the TA's take everything into consideration when assigning your final grade, including the effort you put into the course.

All in all, it is not a bad class and it gets a bad rap. Most people's only prior experience in a chemistry laboratory is the first year General Chem Lab. After that semester, many people have this strange thought that all that is important in chemistry is significant digits and error. Have no fear pre-meds! This class does not require any significant digits or error calculation (though you might just find yourself paying attention to sigfigs out of habit). The first few labs are not very time or labour intensive. For the first month of the course, I usually left by around 4PM if not earlier (the class started officially at 1, but we'd rarely start until 1:15 at the earliest). Most weeks the class begins with a lecture, followed by a quiz and then you get to do the lab work. The quizzes are from hell after the first 3. The first 3 had an average of 18/20 or so, and the rest averaged around 60%. The good news is that the quizzes are scaled according to your own TA. The first 4-5 labs were done individually in order to learn technique, but they were not difficult, and few people had problems. Just as you get used to working by yourself, you get thrown a curveball - partners. Around the same time, the labs start to get more complicated, and require many things to be done at once. Dividing up the work will get you done much faster. Don't have one partner just watching the other - it wastes valuable time. The latter half of the course (with the exception of the final lab) has very long and complicated labs. The earliest I left during most of October and all of November was 5:00, and sometimes I used up the whole time. That being said, there is a lot of down time once the reaction starts - some needed to sit for over an hour. Labs usually do not feel rushed, and you have time to hang out and chill with your class and TAs. The only exception is for 2-3 of some of the later labs which are water sensitive. These you need to work quickly once you dry your glassware, or you will get messed up results. (Watch out for burning your hands)

Taking this course second semester, if you can get in, would be an advantage. I was stuck teaching myself most material for pre-labs and lab reports, as the majority comes from second semester lecture material. If you haven't taken both semesters of Orgo lecture, pay close attention to the pre-lab lectures, otherwise there is no way you will do well on quizzes. That said, if you take it first semester, most people will be in your situation, which will help the curve. Also, first semester, the classes tend to be smaller, and there is less competition to get into the class. My class had 20 people in it (my TA section only had 10), and one class only had 4!

Bottom line: take it first semester if you're confident with the material, or you feel like you can teach yourself. If you want to take it second semester, you'd better hope you have a good registration appointment, or the post-bacs will beat you to the class. An alternative: get a senior to register for the class, and drop it when you have your registration appointment.

If you ask the chemistry department when to take this course, they will tell you that in their experience, it makes no difference whether you take it with first or second semester of orgo. The grades might be statistically similar with both groups of students, as they claim, but the major difference is that while one group must spend hours reading ahead/frantically googling to learn the material, the other group has very little excess work.

For those like me (especially those with a bad orgo professor who are basically totally lost until they teach themselves before midterm), the class could be frustrating. Concepts that the others knew were hastily taught in 15 minutes and tested on right after. My performance on the quizzes, thus, was dreadful. Luckily the class is curved nicely enough that I still ended up doing relatively well.

It wasn't too much the fault of the Instructors, they couldn't really afford to take more time to teach the material and it probably served as a fine review for those taking it concurrent with second semester orgo.

The lab itself was much better than gen chem lab (as is almost everything) and in my section at least, relatively low stress. Lots of standing around talking waiting for things to distill. We usually got out by 4ish and often the TAs let us do a shortened procedure from what's in the lab text. No practical or written examinations, just weekly quizzes for which the class-wide average is usually near a 50 (class is curved, so don't freak out when you see bad quiz grade.) The lab reports are worth a lot more points than the quizzes anyway.

The lab reports take a long time, especially if you need to teach yourself the theory, but they aren't horribly bad. Plus, you only have to do 4 or 5 (can't remember)- the earlier labs are report-free.

Professor Rao has favorites, just as the other lab teachers do. If you aren't one of her favorites, then you're just going to get lower grades than everyone else. I used to do my lab write ups ina group and we'd all have more or less the same answers, yet I always ended up with lower grades...explain that to me. Basically, as hard as you try, if you're not one of her favorites, you're not going to get a good grade. Her lab videos take way too long and you have to get past understanding her accent to actually understand them. Lab lectures were kinda helpful but not the best either.

Justin is a man of many talents. He knows his Organic Chemistry almost as well as he speaks Japanese. He is very stylish, charming, and has wisps of curls like a baby angel. His chilled out attitude and lack of desire to ever take points off makes for a pleasant experience in the class. He is always around in his office if you need help and always willing to answer questions. I highly suggest you take the night lab with him, as this is when he is at his most relaxed state. be sure to snatch him up this coming fall, as less is expected of the students who take the class in the fall since they havent had any orgo yet.